


Dark Days Make For Darker Nights

by o1oo1



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Supernatural Elements, Alternate Universe - Vampire, Alternate Universe - Werewolf, Blood Drinking, Blood and Gore, F/F, F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-10-03
Updated: 2018-05-10
Packaged: 2019-01-08 18:57:42
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 9
Words: 35,231
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12260175
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/o1oo1/pseuds/o1oo1
Summary: Everyone from the high born to lowest speak of how beautiful and special a lady Margaery Tyrell is.They don't know the half of it.After Renly's failed bid for the Iron Throne and her failed marriage the Tyrell's arrive in King's Landing to secure a new alliance. The people rejoice. None of them know that something more dangerous than Stannis and a hundred thousand men now lives among them.The Targaryen's promised Fire and Blood.To Grow Strong one Tyrell only needs the latter... And a lot of it.In the Riverlands Robb Stark is waging his war, on the verge of attacking the Crag. Yet the more blood he spills the darker and more brutal his dreams become. Every fiber of his being is screaming for the full moon to come and he doesn't know why. None of the Starks do.





	1. Shadows At Dawn

Her eyes were on fire. Burning red and sore. She thought she had gotten over the tears but no, they came hard and angry racking her body with physical pain and mental despair. More than that she hated herself more and more for each time she cried, and left her face blotchy and plain to see that she had wept. It had been months surrounded by enemies, mistreated and either hated, pitied or seen as a pest. Yet she hadn’t been able to adapt. 

She lifted the hem of her dress to look at her midriff. It was a mosaic of bruises. Some red and angry, some black and blue and some yellowing and disappearing. Not for long though. Her back was worse. Ser Meryn Trant had struck her with the flat of his sword. As hard as he could. From right shoulder to left hip there was an angry red bruise with several cuts from the edge of the blade. Those would scar.

When her marriage was cancelled. She thought life might improve… That was her worst mistake. Dealing with horror was horrifying. Being plunged back into that pit of despair after thinking you had your fingernails on the escape. That was worse. 

Even with all these things she still wanted to present herself like a lady. Was still embarrassed by her teardrop stained face, despite those who would see her would hate her. 

“Come my lady,” the Lannister soldier yanked her elbow so hard she swore it might have been dislocated. “Hurry!” He pushed her again. She almost tripped over the hem of her skirt and the red cloaked man and his friend both chortled cruelly at her misfortune. 

She was positive that the King had told his men that it was fine to hurt her as long as it wasn’t her face. The two soldiers talked loudly about mistreating some of the whores down in a cheap brothel. Laughing at the pain they had inflicted on the working girls and how they beat up some innocent men who were just trying to get on with their lives. 

Their vileness… She was numb to it now. 

The day was almost over. The setting sun was already throwing shadows around their feet. The dark would rise as the light died. The gloomy, ominous halls of King’s Landing once filled her with joy and hope. Now the Red Keep felt trapping and oppressive. As if it could close in on her and take what was left of her inside itself. Even with the roaring, glorious sun pouring over the Blackwater it felt sinister. As if the splendour of the light itself were as fake as the words of the people it covered. 

The smell of pollen and flora would have been sweet to her nose. Well should have been. Everything smelled of shit. Everything tasted like charred ash. Everything was spoiled. If she wasn’t such a coward then the other alternatives would be sweeter… She did have a high balcony. 

“My lady Tyrell,” the red cloaked soldier bowed his head in the doorway to a stone gazebo. The man putting on a courtly curt tone that was very absent when talking to her. “Lady Stark.” He waved rudely in her general direction. 

“Yes yes be off with you,” an older woman’s voice spoke. “What are you bloody waiting for? Winter? Bugger off.”

The Lannister guard shot Sansa one last unpleasant look before grabbing his friend’s arm and taking his leave from the gardens. 

She was nervous. Still. Still she felt nervous, the uncomfortable prickling in the pit of her churning stomach. Even after all the horror she had experienced she still was scared and was able to get more scared. She loathed herself for this. 

“Come in my girl, come in,” the voice called her. It didn’t sound unfriendly. However she had been tricked before… Cersei seemed so sweet once…

“My lady,” Sansa’s eyes didn’t leave the cobbled floor. 

“I said come in girl,” the voice repeated. It sounded friendly and it hadn’t when talking to the Lannister guard. 

Sansa shuffled into the gazebo, only looking up enough to see where she was going. 

“Don’t be so shy lass, we’re only women here.” Sansa looked up to find the face whose voice spoke. An elderly woman with her hair covered sat at the head of the circular stone bench which surrounded the stone table in the centre of the gazebo. She was smiling and her eyes were warm. Don’t get fooled again Sansa told herself. “I am Lady Olenna Tyrell. As arrogant as it sounds I know a highborn girl like you knows of me… Probably know my house’s ancestry for a hundred years… Don’t look so worried girl. I learned all the Starks too.”

“Yes my lady,” Sansa mumbled. 

“Hmm, you lot off,” Olenna commanded. All her handmaidens scattered off. The Queens of Thorns, Sansa remembered, was this lady’s nickname. “Now sit.” She was watched patiently as she slid down gracefully onto the stone bench. “Would you care for some lemon cakes?” She perked up and smiled despite herself. “I’ve been told they are your favorite? Yes? Good, you,” she pointed at a startled servant, “well? Are you a lazy assassin who uses starvation as his weapon instead of poison or steel? No? Then go get us some bloody food.”

“Thank you for inviting me my lady.”

“It’s boring here. And unlike you I choose to be here. For some demented reason. Trust me I’m much more interesting than anyone else here,” Olenna stated matter-of-factly. “My granddaughter wishes to speak to you too.”

“Margaery Tyrell?” Sansa asked politely. She knew Margaery was married to a traitor. However she was forgiven as were her family. Unlike her. “I hear she is very beautiful my lady.”

“As are you my dear. Don’t worry I know this mustn’t be comfortable for you. However my granddaughter will arrive just after dusk. I’m sure you will get on famously.”

They waited together as the sun set. The rising horizontal line of dark was their timepiece. Making small talk at first before Olenna Tyrell shifted towards asking more pertinent questions about Joffrey and his family. Sansa gave hollow platitudes instead of answers. Always worried about that incoming fist or back of a hand striking her for a verbal misstep. 

“Ah, now you can relax girl, Margaery is here and you won’t have to pretend not to bored by my geriatric ramblings.”

The exposed skin of Sansa’s arms and her chest above her cleavage tingled with goosebumps. A chill came over her. It was similar to the chill she felt in Winterfell when underdressed. Similar but not the same. Her heart buzzed and vibrated and all the warmth was temporarily sucked out of the garden itself. Temporarily as a girl a few years older than her glided, ethereally, into the gazebo.

She was beautiful.

Truly so. 

Her curled chestnut brown hair was tied behind her head in a style which was simplistic but managed to look complicated. Her eyes were a deeper brown than her hair but as she smiled at Sansa the Northern girl saw a depth she had never seen before. They said her father’s eyes were shards of ice. Well this person had eyes which swam in deep brown pools holding a… Something she couldn’t place. 

“Sansa?” She asked. Her voice was like velvet. It was powerful. That was what she couldn’t place at first. Her eyes, her face, her voice all exuded a power she had never ever heard before. Never heard anything close. 

“Yes, yes my lady, a pleasure to meet you,” Sansa scrambled to her feet. Margaery leaned in and kissed on each cheek. Her lips were soft and she smelled amazing, yet the touch of her mouth made Sansa shiver again. Deep in her core. 

“So wonderful to see you,” Margaery lingered close for a moment longer than appropriate before pulling back and moving around the gazebo to kiss her grandmother and take her own seat.

Even her movements were different. There was a power and grace to them which Sansa couldn’t place. So elegant and confident as if the stone table would smash into a thousand tiny bits if this woman decided to walk straight through a solid object. 

“I’ve been exploring grandmother,” Margaery explained only to receive a knowing tut in response. “It is so pretty here.”

“On the surface.”

“Sorry?”

Sansa went red realizing that she let that slip from her lips. She had to stop doing that. Saying to Joffrey all that time ago that perhaps Robb would bring her his head had caused Sansa’s so much pain and yet it kept happening. 

“Nothing, I, I meant, I… It was nothing please trust me,” Sansa loathed the voice of the pathetic scared little girl that seemed to inhabit more and more of her mind by the day. Pushing out Sansa Stark and replacing her with a blank slate of what a meek and obedient girl ought to be. 

“No go on girl,” Olenna pushed her. “We would never betray your confidences.”

Sansa opened her mouth about to let the cascade of bottled up feelings torrent out. She stopped herself at the last moment. As if it were a sign the bruises and cuts on her arms and stomach ached with warning. 

“You can speak to us.”

“Leave her be grandmother, she’s terrified. Her heart is about to burst through her chest,” Margaery soothed. 

Sansa took a deep breath swallowing the vomit bubbling in the bottom of her throat. 

“The city is wonderful. It is bright, vibrant and home to the greatest people in the Kingdoms… The rightful royal family… And… It’s… You know… Good?” Sansa cursed inside her head. That wasn’t supposed to be a question. 

“I just wished to speak to you because I am to marry Joffrey,” Margaery said comfortingly. Her tone reminding Sansa of the tone a stablemaster would speak to a skittish horse with. She decided she wouldn’t trust these people. As desperate as she was for a confidant or even just a person who wouldn’t backstab at the first chance. She wouldn’t followed again. People have to earn trust. 

Stop being a stupid girl. 

Sansa couldn’t count how many times she had repeated that mantra.

“How kind is he? How intelligent?” Olenna pressed in a softer voice… Cersei had used a soft voice once. “How gallant?”

“I’m to be his wife,” Margaery hummed, she picked at some grapes and held one between her thumb and forefinger. She didn’t eat it. Just fixed Sansa with her deep brown eyes. Sansa had to look away. There was something unnatural in those eyes. 

“Is he honest?” 

“My father always told the truth,” Sansa muttered. Stop! A voice in her head screamed but the words tumbled out. Pent up inside for so long the seal broke and despite all her reason the emotion was let loose.

“He had that reputation,” Olenna agreed. “And they named him traitor and took his head.”

“Joffrey. Joffrey did that,” Sansa corrected angrily. No longer occupying her own body. Stop this! They’ll hurt you. They’ll hurt you more than before. “He promised mercy and then he cut off my father’s head… He made me go to the battlements and look at it…” The Tyrell women sat patiently and politely waiting. “He’s a monster.”

“A monster eh?”

“No!” Sansa almost exploded. Now some the pressure had been released she was able to re-seal those emotions and panic took over. Twisting her stomach and making her head too hot yet she shivered in her extremities. “He’s a lion and brave and my brother is traitor, my father is a traitor I have traitor’s blood… Please don’t make me say anymore.” Back to the pathetic animal she had become. The flash of Sansa Stark re-emerging disappeared as quickly as it bubbled to the surface. Like a flint against iron creating a spark. Nothing more. 

“Leave her be grandmother.”

“Yes, of course. Would you care for some more fresh lemon cakes?” Olenna leaned forward and the politician evaporated and the kindly old lady replaced her. Well that might have been a ploy Sansa reflected.

She was hungry… Freshly baked lemon cakes did sound nice. 

Metal clinked and boots stamped. Were soldiers bringing the food? Oh no. Sansa had finally semi-relaxed knowing the questioning had ended. That ended the moment the Lannister soldiers arrived. It was Carden. Sansa never learned the last name. The man who dragged her here. Who enjoyed hitting her and bullying her and tormenting her. Making her own skin not feel like a safe thing to inhabit. 

“Ladies,” he bowed his head an eighth of an inch. “We’re here for Lady Sansa.” 

“She is just eating with us so,” Olenna waved him off dismissively. Sansa all of a sudden felt an affinity for the intimidating matriarch.

“I have been instructed to bring her back to her apartments.”

“And since then you have been instructed to bugger off,” Olenna snapped. 

Sansa noticed the soldiers had both looked at Margaery, as most men would, obviously wishing to oogle the woman. However both of them had to turn away unable to meet her gaze for a second. 

“This order comes from the Queen.”

“My lady,” Olenna added nastily and the soldier bowed his head in mock submission. “What awful brutes I shall have to tell Lord Tywin about your manners. Go on Sansa we shall invite you to come and eat with us soon. Uninterrupted by such imbeciles.”

After saying farewell and leaving the garden yellow and white spots burst over Sansa’s vision as Carden’s fist struck her in the stomach. She doubled over. It was against every lady-like instinct which had been breed into her but she had to spit. The heat and scorching consistency of the sick stung her throat. 

“Cunt.”

 

* * *

“She was nice.”

“She was scared.”

“I could hear her heart I could feel it beating like a hummingbird,” I replied.

“Hmm.”

Grandmother didn’t like to acknowledge what happened to me. Only she and Loras knew. Not even Willias or Garlan. She just pretended it wasn’t the case. I wasn’t what I was. 

“So… Joffrey is a monster,” I tried to restart the conservation. It was disheartening. As if I had asked for this. As if I wanted to be this way. Of course it had it’s benefits but still. 

“As if we needed further proof.”

“What do you mean?” I asked, I thought the point of meeting Sansa Stark to ascertain information about the King… The one in King's Landing that is. 

“Eddard Stark betrayed his best friend and sold his honor to seize power for himself? Ned Stark?! Ha!” Olenna barked happily. “What silliness.”

“True however…” I paused. Hearing the noises from hundred of yards away. That Lannister guard just gut punched Sansa… Felt my teeth grinding. 

“However…”

“Nothing Grandmother. I have to go. I think I need a walk.”

Olenna just nodded. 

Maybe I moved a little too quickly. A little faster than a person should be able too but that vile little man hit a teenage girl. He deserved retribution. Sansa suffered enough she needed a champion and I need… Well, the grapes didn’t sate my appetite. 

* * *

“Get in there,” he growled shoving the traitor’s girl into her chamber. It was a nicer room than he would ever be able to dream of. Even if he were knighted and given a holdfast. That couldn’t buy a room this nice in the Red Keep. He didn’t like the Stark bitch. A girl that pretty would never consider him a match… Unless he paid and then that girl would have been dumped in by everyone man with a few silver stags. 

“Littlefingers?” his mate asked.

“Yes, I need a good fuck,” Carden replied. 

“With a young redhead?”

“Fuck off, you tellin’ me you won’t fuck that Northern bitch?”

“Everyone would.”

“Except Renly,” Carden laughed and his laugh was returned. He loved having superiority over his fellow men. He had spent the Battle of Blackwater defending the King. So he did very little fighting but received all the rewards and yet when they arrived at the brothel he bullied and pushed the greeters as if he were a hero deserving of a great respect. Using his Lannister armor and position to intimidate and cajole a lower price and a nicer room. 

Carden stumbled out of Littlefinger’s establishment after midnight. The streets were dark and he lost his mate in a sea of wine, tits and more wine. 

He stumbled out heading back to the barracks in the Red Keep. Pushing a beggar hard out the way as he stumbled laughing at as the old man spilled over the cobbles. 

In a good mood he started whistling as he purposefully leaned up against the front door of some peasant and pissed all over their front door. Carden took pride in covering these dirty poor people’s door with his piss. Just as he truly took a deep pleasure in shoving around the lower classes or pushing goods off of lower’s merchant’s stalls then daring them to say a word back to him. 

The hair on the back of his neck stood and a shiver went down his spine. He felt sober all of a sudden. 

Hurrying he pushed his cock back in his breeches, droplets of urine running down his leg in his haste as he drew his sword.

No one.

The fuck?!

Wait. Some woman, had to be from the figure, walking down the street towards him. His vision was still blurred and unclear despite his wits returning to him. The shawl she was wearing obscured her face completely.

“You there! Oi!” Carden bellowed at her. She stopped and pointed from fifteen yards away at his feet. He glanced quickly down before looking back up. She was gone. “Ha! I’m truly wankered,” he laughed out loud as fumbled with the tricky business of fitting his sword back into the sheathe. The bloody thing seemed to be much wider than he remembered and the head of his sheath much more narrow. 

Chortling happily to himself he kicked the front door he pissed against hoping to wake up the scum who lived there before walking home. He glanced over his shoulder and his heart went cold. That cloaked woman was behind him. The same distance.The same shawl. Except this time she was moving towards him. 

His blade rasped from the scabbard but fell to the floor in his drunken, clumsy panic. Scrabbling around in the dirt and his piss he grasped the blade only for the woman to have vanished again. 

* * *

“Behind you,” I whispered into his ear. The brute swung wildly at me but I was already gone. “Behind you again.”

He screamed like an animal and lunged his weapon at me. It was simple. The sword moved at a fraction of the speed as I myself sped up. All I had to do was place one finger tip on the edge of the blade and push it aside. 

I grabbed his wrist and broke it with a squeeze. He dropped the sword. Went to grab his wrist but I shoved him back. He lifted two feet up in the air and flew five or six feet into the wall of the poor people who this vile man had been harassing. 

That snap was satisfying. Parts of his spine broke on impact. I could hear the bones come to pieces. Just as I could hear some dogs chasing rats several streets away or the patrons still fucking gleefully away in the brothels. So the broken bones sounded like war drums.

The Lannister soldier was crumpled on the floor crying now. Holding his broken wrist in a broken pile with a broken body and a broken mind. 

“You break easily,” I commented looking down at my prey. “If you and Sansa Stark had your roles reversed you wouldn’t last a day.”

“Who… Who… Ah fuck,” he spat unable to muster any energy. 

“Who am I?” I replied calmly. Pulling my shawl down.

“You?!”

“Me.”

“Why?!”

“You’re a man, a soldier, with a sword and armor, it must be fun for you to push around little girls, to beat the poor and helpless,” I explained. Keeping calm the whole time before lurching into action and grabbing him by the throat and lifting him off the floor so his feet were kicking, searching for solid ground. “Yet those people did nothing wrong did they? You just felt like using your power against them. How does it feel Ser? To have someone more powerful treat you like a plaything?”

“D… D… Deeeemon!”

“Perhaps. Perhaps… However, my victims deserve it, what’s your excuse for being a monster?”

He had no reply. Lifting him higher up and turning his head to expose his neck. My gums hurt as they did every time when my canines elongated twice the length.

His screamed disappeared from the hole in his throat my teeth tore. 

* * *

The knock in the morning always filled her with dread. It was a lottery. Either Carden that nasty bastard. Ser Meryn Trant a nastier bastard. On the off chance she would be guarded by Ser Arys Oakheart and that was the best thing that could happen to her in her life right now. That knight behaved as he ought to. That was it. Pathetic of her. 

Sansa crossed the room and opened the door to her chamber expected an insult for taking long to greet her escort.

Instead she almost toppled backwards.

“Ser Loras,” she stammered. A little dumbstruck by the most handsome man in the Kingdoms. “To what do I owe the honor Ser?”

“You look very beautiful today my lady,” he bowed his head, as she felt her cheeks flair with the hot red stain of embarrassment. 

“As do you Ser. Handsome!” Sansa basically shouted the last word.

“Sorry?” He smirked playfully.

“You’re handsome not beautiful… Well you are beautiful but the male word… Sorry,” Sansa dipped her head. 

“Don’t worry my lady, and thank you for your sweet words. I’ve been asked by my grandmother if you would like to break your fast with us in the Rose Gardens?”

“Of course Ser, I would be delighted,” Sansa smiled. A genuine one for the first time in a long time. 

Ser Loras held out the crook of his elbow and Sansa slotted her arm in the gap and walked with him. In her head she drifted off into the wonderful fantasy land that kept her mental state from fraying apart entirely. A world in which she and Loras were married and walking together. ‘Twas a sweet place. 

“Oh you maybe alarmed to hear my lady, but your previous guard, Brandon?”

“Carden!” She corrected. Don’t call that man by my sweet brother’s namesake. 

“Apologies, Carden, unfortunately he was found dead just before dawn.”

“Oh.” Good. 

* * *

“Then it is agreed,” Robb Stark nodded along with his generals advice. “We move to take the Crag tomorrow morning.”

“Another day another victory,” the Greatjon declared heartily. “Tywin is bottled up in King’s Landing, kissing that incest born freak’s arse while we close our jaws on his home!”

“Perhaps they’ll sing the Snows of Casterly Rock instead of the Rains of Castamere,” Roose Bolton commented dryly. Robb was never sure if the man was being sarcastic. 

“Then I shall see you all tomorrow my lords.”

“Your grace,” was repeated by each man as they left his tent. 

Robb smiled and patted shoulders and shook hands as a strong King should, right up until the second the tent flaps were sealed behind his retinue. Leaving him alone. He collapsed to the floor, missing the chair he was flailing for. 

Robb had been struggling for days. Dreams of eating raw flesh. A fatigue during the day and a sudden burst of energy at night. 

He was sweating like he was being cooked alive. An unpleasant thought for a Stark especially. 

He tore at his armor, throwing off the steel and tearing frantically at his leather armor, ripping it over his head. Even shirtless he was boiling. Using the map covered table for support Robb dragged himself to his feet. Snatching for a jug of water he dumped the whole thing over his back.

It didn’t cool him down. It heated the water up if anything. Like plunging a freshly forged sword into a pail of water. 

The heat became too much and he fell back to the floor again. His skin was moving… It couldn’t be but it was… Staring at his hand Robb knew he must have been hallucinating. The skin seemed to be falling off. Like cooking butter in pan. It fell off soft and without resistance. 

Fur was underneath. He tried to scream in agony but nothing came out. As blackness took over his vision and he succumbed and passed out on the floor of his command tent.


	2. Thunderstorms

Carden had always dreamed of being an awarded a holdfast. Having people call him my lord. He fantasized about finding some highborn girl who was out of his league position wise and yet charmed her into marriage. This was how he spent his guard duty and when he was lying in bed in a barracks surrounded by other lowly soldiers. It was his happy place. 

Carden had worked out this dream over many years. It had developed and it had been solidified over the years and he spent as much time in this dream world as he could.

Carden didn’t train harder than others. He didn’t know anything of the realm and didn’t care. He couldn’t read and had no intention of learning. When the War of the Five Kings started he was drafted and despite being told to march under Ser Kevan Lannister’s banner and north to war. He managed to slip away. As Ser Jaime and Lord Tywin lead ten of thousands of men he used his craftiness to join the tiny contingent heading to King’s Landing. 

Carden watched the Imp set the Blackwater on fire and win that battle. Yet he still bad mouthed the dwarf to anyone who would listen. When Joffrey decided to flee the battle and return to his mother no one asked Carden to join his escort back and yet he still went. He never drew his sword.

Carden hit Sansa Stark and he took a lot of pleasure in it. Despite lusting after her. Despite escaping to fantasies late at night where the girl forgave him and they fell into a deep and soppy love. He worked her into his happy place and imagined being buried in the crypts at Winterfell one day; remembered well and beloved after being made a Warden. Remembered as fondly as the great Eddard Stark. That was what he wanted.

Carden’s corpse was picked at after his throat was ripped open and his life was drank away. The poor took all that was valuable. His money first but then all the way down to the metal on his belt buckle.

Carden’s body didn’t get buried. It was dragged onto the steps of the most prominent building of Flea Bottom by religious fanatics. It lay there. Placed in a way that highlighted the two blatant fang marks in his neck. There he was used as a prop for a leader amongst the fanatics to tell the poorest and most desperate in the Capitol that evil was afoot. That Stannis had cast the god’s aside. That demonic beings who preyed on innocents and lived off blood infested the city. That reports had come from the Reach of men found with no blood with similar wounds to the former Lannister soldier. He combined that with the news of the Northmen using wolves and magic in their war.

Carden in death was used as a prop to enrage people into thinking that extreme faith was solution to other worldly problems. 

Some rotted mess was thrown away a few days. If it had been a person once then any trace of that was gone.

* * *

Sansa leaned down to kiss both of my cheeks. Thanking me, my brother and grandmother for the invitation to break her fast. It was the least that I could. The way she was treated made me sick and she had managed to relax all through the meal.

Sadly I had to go meet my soon to be husband. 

Joffrey.

Sick little boy apparently. Not unwell sick but sick nonetheless.

A coward who loved violence. Could there be a worse thing? Stannis burned his enemies alive but at least he was first off the landing boats when the so-called King’s dwarf Uncle fought on his behalf. 

I didn’t feel too good. 

It was a mixture of things. The sun hurt me. Made me weak and sapped my energy. It was like being massively hungover when I was exposed to the rays. That and the Lannister soldier who I ate may have made me sick. Alcohol and salty meats. Eugh. Disgusting. I could have just killed him then drank some cow’s blood. Cud never hurt anyone.

Oh well live and learn.

He was playing with some crossbow. Garlan, my second eldest brother, always told me it was a coward’s weapon. No skill was needed with such a device. Unlike a longbow. 

The fool tried to confront me about my marriage to Renly but cowered under the full brunt of my gaze. If I fixed him with it for more than a few seconds I am sure he would spoiled his expensive poncey trousers. 

Changing focus I picked up his crossbow. Trying to seduce the little bastard.

“So you pull this here,” I ran my fingers suggestively over the lever, “and something dies over there.”

“Do you think you could? Kill something?” He asked. What a lunatic. The boy was more excited by the prospect of hypothetical murder than the prospect of fucking me. Even though it’s arrogant most men want to and yet this kid… Eugh. 

“Yes I think I can,” I said shyly. I doubted the ‘King’ has ever killed a man. Unlike me. I know what it is like to see the terror turn to grey in a man’s eyes. 

“You know my lady, that…” Joffrey’s jaw went slack as I fixed him with unbridled strength of my eyes. The drool slipped from the corner of his mouth as he rocked from foot to foot looking utterly gormless. 

“You were very pleased with my visit, and yet now you are exhausted and wish to sleep the day away,” I instructed maintaining deep eye contact. He nodded. I patted him on the head and ruffled his hair. It was very well kempt, at least he had that going for him. 

The King was still holding on his toy. Yes it was a deadly crossbow but in his hands: a toy. Holding the handle and letting it scrap over the floor for a couple steps before it clattered uselessly against the floor as the Lord of the Seven Kingdoms and Protector of the Realm fell face first onto his bed. Asleep before the face plant was completed. 

I surveyed him for a moment. 

It looked like Tywin Lannister was running the realms again while a mad King blustered about causing pain and misery. 

Opening the door to back to the Red Keep Ser Meryn Trant eyed me suspiciously. 

“Where is the King?”

I was about to be this idiot’s Queen and he couldn’t even muster up the accorded respect. Joffrey and his most loyal men struck me more as criminals or bandits; surrounded by dedicated knifemen rather than worthy knights.

“Snoozing,” I replied flippantly. This was the man who beat Sansa Stark with his sword. He was over six foot and as broad as two men. Her grandmother had reported the goings ons of the court to me and I did not like what I had heard.

“Snoozing?!” He spat incredulously, rounding his shoulders to face me. He stared down my top as he was intimidating me. What a piece of work. The Kingsguard has fallen low since the days of the Sword of the Morning. 

Well not intimidating me, but trying to at any rate, little did he know I could put my fingers through the steel of his cuirass and pull his chest cavity in half like tearing a wet loaf of bread. 

Oh well. What was good for the goose.

“You will stop beating Sansa Stark,” I instructed the lumbering brute fixing him with the unbridled weight of my eyes. “The next time you go to hit her your body will feel the pain first.”

“Uh-huh,” Trant nodded looking every bit the imbecile he was. 

I did not want to marry that man. Perhaps grandmother and I need to have a chat.

“Oh bloody hell! Margaery!” Olenna Tyrell jumped in her seat as she turned to find me sitting beside her. “I’m an old woman! My heart could give in.”

“Even you don’t believe that,” I quipped. “I just spoke to the boy king.”

“Yes, shouldn’t you still be with him?”

“No he wanted to sleep all day.”

“Did he now?” Olenna tutted. “I shouldn’t blame you for doing whatever thing you did. I’ve collected all the tidbits, rumors, hearsay and gossip of our benevolent King. They’re not good,” she concluded with a carefree shrug. 

“A monster right?”

“Yes it would seem Sansa Stark’s appraisal of her former unrequited love was more than correct.”

“Huh. I’m not marrying that,” I said determinedly.

“Oh no dear, you are not.”

 

* * *

 

“If you unshackle me I’ll show you how to build a fire.”

“I know how to build a fire.”

“Then… Build one,” Jaime drawled only to be met with silence and despite it being pitch black he was positive a sullen glower as well. 

“And have people find us? Don’t you want to get back to King’s Landing Kingslayer?” Brienne finally gave in and replied. She had to each time. He was so annoying that silence was impossible to maintain. Brienne had the intention of just ignoring him and she failed everyday. 

“Won’t be worthwhile if I freeze to death will it?” Jaime told his brute of an escort. “So…” Jaime continued after a long awkward silence. “Are we going to snuggle together for warmth? Was that your plan? Maybe shift in your sleep as we are pressed up against each other?”

He didn’t know why he was doing this. Being freed was the luckiest thing that could have happened to him. Yet Jaime just couldn’t stop antagonizing her.

“Fine. A small fire.”

“Good, do you need a hand or instruction?” 

“I can build a fire. Probably built more than you Kingslayer,” Brienne snapped, as Jaime finally saw her leaving her chosen hiding spot. They were in a hovel of a cave hiding from the moonlight which coated the forest outside and from the icy howling wind. It was a good spot. He would have picked it himself.

“Good insult. You’ve tarnished my honor as a professional fire builder.”

“You know what?!” Brienne turned back to the cave, she wouldn’t be able to see Jaime but he could bloody well see her. 

“What?” Jaime sneered. She didn’t respond, turning her head behind her, “what is it? I’ll get rid of the spiders if you need me to?”

“Shut your mouth Kingslayer,” she rasped, he did. The seriousness in which she spoke made him shut up. Just like when she cut down those three Stark rapists. There were times when antagonizing might be fun but not too smart. Brienne snuck back into the cave, pushing Jaime to the back, into the pitch black. “Just be quiet,” she repeated. He nodded. Silly woman probably was scared by some forest critters but it was better to be safe than sorry. If the Starks caught him again he would never be free.

The cowered in the dark for several uneventful minutes. Just as Jaime was about to open his mouth and taunt this beastly… Thing? Yes, thing would do. When he froze as well. Something cracked. A branch most likely, but a big one. It cracked hard and loud and the seemingly sleepy forest burst to life as the smaller creatures fled. 

So perhaps this thing had good instincts. 

Probably a bear. 

When they both heard a deep growl, a deep reverberating one, which vibrated through the leaves and trees, Jaime actually grasped the wrist of Brienne of Tarth. That was a growl he had never heard. 

From the depth of their hidey hole the forest was visible at the end of the cave. Moonlight spilling out, casting a surreal glow. 

Jaime may have grabbed Brienne’s wrist first, but when they both saw that huge hulking… There were no words. Something giant and black, with claws that looked like barbed arrow heads walked slowly and very deliberately in front of their refuge. Then Brienne grabbed him back. Whatever THAT was it was so big that they couldn’t see it’s head just the colossal frame. 

It roared and started bounding off. Fallen branches, fallen trunks and anything in between snapped and tore in its path. 

After staying close in their deep dark pit for a very long time Brienne finally moved to the cave exit to peer around. 

“A relative of yours?” Jaime asked.

“This isn’t the time for joking Kingslayer.”

If it wasn’t a time for joking it was a time for panic, despair and succumbing to hopelessness Jaime thought. He would cling to joking instead and pretend he had not seen what he had seen. 

 

* * *

 

“You do seem a lot happier as of late my lady.”

“Do I?” Sansa replied to her handmaiden Shae. She was surprised to hear this. Though perhaps she shouldn’t be. The last three days King Joffrey was feeling under the weather and had mostly slept in his chambers. The Tyrells had invited her to meals and Ser Loras had been most kind to her. “Yes perhaps you are right.”

“I hope so. It is good to see you smile.”

Sansa smiled at her handmaiden. As much of a disaster as she was to begin with Sansa doubted she would have lucked out to get such a loyal handmaiden. One who was loyal to her first and not Queen. 

“I shouldn’t smile though should I?” Sansa said. “The realm is at war, men are dying and my brother is warring with my captors… I shouldn’t be happy.”

“You can’t affect any of those things. No need to be unhappy for the sake of it.”

“Perhaps.”

“No, not perhaps… My lady,” Shae added. “The city is angry too.”

“Why? I thought the Tyrells were feeding them?”

“Yes true but the religious men are coming and preaching against demon worship and black magic,” Shae explained. “The streets are heaving with discontent.”

“Stannis was defeated,” Sansa replied slowly, presuming she was speaking of Robert’s brother’s new faith. 

“Yes but others think him the true King. Others speak of murders in the city. That nasty guard of yours.” Carden Sansa thought angrily. “He was found with his throat opened and all his blood gone. They say it is demonic.”

“It’s silly peasant superstition,” Sansa waved her off. “Not that I meant that… When I said peasant I wasn’t..”

“It’s fine my lady,” Shae soothed her. “Now we have to be going. Your guard is here. It’s Ser Oakheart.” Oh phew.

The Kingsguard dipped his head when Sansa’s chamber door was opened and complimented her on her beauty. A compliment she gladly returned as she linked her arm with his. Resting her forearm on the cold steel which engulfed his forearm. 

The Red Keep was frantic when they left their chambers. There were many soldiers. Many more than before. Looking suspicious. Gripping the shafts of their spears a little tighter than they used to. 

“You were right,” Sansa whispered to Shae. “Is something the matter Ser?”

“Pardon me my lady?” Ser Oakheart spoke, stopping to listen politely.

“Is something the matter? There are many more guards than before.”

“Oh yes, well some idiots calling themselves sparrows have arrived in the Capitol preaching death and doom. You know what these religious fanatics can be like. Especially the commoners. No offence to you.”

Shae just held up her palms. 

“Apologizes. You have nothing to worry about my lady, we will keep you safe.”

“Of course Ser.”

“It’s strange the sparrows have been here for a while and suddenly they seem to have gained followers. It’s just foolishness. Talks of Krakens and five headed calves. Talks of monsters killing Lannister soldiers,” Ser Arys continued, unlinking their arms in order to gesticulate. As good as the man was, especially compared to his peers, he certainly was fond of gossip. “If you ask me,” the Kingsguard kept on speaking, unprompted. Clearly taking pleasure in this. “It comes from Stannis Baratheon. He took up against the Seven. It has riled people up. They will calm down eventually.”

“I don’t follow the Seven…” Sansa whispered.

“Oh my lady,” Ser Arys stopped again and bowed his head. “I meant no offence. The Seven and the Old Gods have lifted in harmony for centuries. This is a brutal foreign religion.”

“Foreign?” Shae huffed.

“Apologies again. Years of war have dulled my courtly manners I fear.”

“That isn’t necessary Ser.”

Shae and Sansa shared a glance and a hidden laugh at the knight’s embarrassment.

“Morning!”

It wasn’t just Sansa who jumped a bit at that but Shae and even Ser Arys Oakheart. They all leapt a little from the balls of their feet. As Margaery Tyrell joined them from… Well where? The three of them had been walking down a long corridor with no entrances or exits. Yet Margaery just appeared in a poof of smoke. 

“A good morning to you my lady,” Ser Aerys leapt to action as if he had just sat on a burning hot surface. “You look radiant this morning if you do not mind me saying so my lady.”

“Of course not Ser and thank you. You look dashing in your white armor. Well no,” Margaery wiped her brow, it seemed like acting to Sansa but a quick glance towards Shae and Aerys showed she was alone in this, as they were both captivated. “You look dashing whereas the armor simply enhances this.”

“You are most gracious,” Ser Arys looked bashful. This honorable man and skilled fighter was shy like either a naughty young boy caught doing something wrong or a young girl first meeting her desired marital match. “What brings you here my lady?”

“I just wished to see my new friend,” Margaery replied. Her voice sounded entirely different from when Sansa had ate with her in the Rose garden. It sounded shockingly different from she had first met the woman. “How are you?” She asked Sansa, linking her arm with hers. Replacing the Kingsguard as her protector… Huh. That was a strange thought. 

“Well thank you,” Sansa muttered. She was a bit shy and wary around the Tyrells. Despite all their kind words and even their kind deeds the outburst she had indulged in about Joffrey made her feel unsafe. Considering how unsafe she felt normally… “I am looking forward to court.”

“Oh me too,” Margaery hummed with gleeful agreement. “It will be my first proper court. The one after the Battle didn’t really count.”

The King looked tired when they entered the Throne Room. The Queen looked angry. The Hand’s face was unreadable. 

Court was dull and naught much happened. Simply listing off honors to those who weren’t important enough the first time. Praising the valiance of the soldiers and discussing how the realm should continue to fight its war. 

* * *

Fucked. 

That was the only word that could describe how Robb felt. What happened?

He hadn’t opened his eyes yet. He rolled a bit and hissed with pain as he rolled over something sharp. Was he naked? Yes was the answer to that question. Robb confirmed this by rolling very sensitive parts of himself over some thorns or thistles. 

“Fuck,” Robb opened his eyes and pushed himself into a sitting position. He looked around. He could have been anywhere in the Riverlands. Just a woodland, which could have been anywhere between Seagard and Tumbleton. He closed his eyes again. His head hurt to say the least. Imagine drinking fifty glasses of wine then taking a mace to the side of the face, Robb would envy feeling like that. 

He actually jumped while seated and yelped a little like a wolf when a warm, wet tongue licked his cheek. 

“Grey Wind!” He smiled reopening his eyes to see his faithful direwolf standing over him. Could a direwolf smirk? “What happened?” Robb’s voice rasped out of his throat. Grabbing hold of his direwolf’s fur he pulled himself up. 

His body was coated in dirt and what looked like dry blood. 

He couldn’t manage to focus long enough to work out why he was here. His head was swimming, pounding and was a tumultuous mess. His head was rushing from standing up too quickly. Just to add to this particular form of misery he was feeling.

Grey Wind nudged him and nuzzled him and trance like Robb followed. The walked a long, long, long time. It was a long time. Well a decent time. It was hard to track when he couldn’t think a complete thought. Finally the sigils of his camp came into sight. 

Oh right. He was naked. 

Shit. 

Grey Wind walked in front of Robb turned around to face him and used his muzzle to nudge him back and back and back until he was hidden in a hedgerow. The giant beast ran off. Robb just waited. The wolf had a much greater control over its mental faculties than him so he just deferred. Slumping down on his arse to rest more.

Robb had no clue how long he waited. It could have been two minutes it could have been half a morning. However when Grey Wind returned with his trousers and a top from his tent he sighed with relief. Pulling them on he limped shoeless to his camp. 

The guards didn’t notice him as he slipped into his tent by crawling under the back of it to be sneaky. 

Very royal indeed.

His mind was returning to him and when in his tent he was able to drink lots of water and eat bread. The bread tasted vile. Spitting it out he picked up some cold sausages and ate them like a savage. 

“Your grace!” 

Robb almost jumped from his skin at that. Walking to the front of his tent all the tables and his belongings were knocked on the floor. It looked like Grey Wind had killed an elk in a frenzy there. 

“One moment!” Robb called back his voice still rasped like a man at death’s door. 

He poured more water over himself to cool down the burning sensation that had racked him since he opened his eyes. He felt a bit better. Though its not hard to improve on shit.

“Yes?” He opened the tent flaps to see to two Stark Men-at-Arms looking giddy.

“We hope you have recovered from your illness your grace?”

“I… erm… recovering,” Robb blagged. 

“The Crag is ours your grace, the Greatjon climbed the ladders first and cut a man in half and they surrendered instantly.”

“Excellent. Thank you.”

“Can we fetch anything for your grace? To get you well again?”

“Some beef would go down well. Undercooked.”

The tent flaps closed and Robb fell backwards unable to pretend to be fine anymore and sleep came over him again.

* * *

After Margaery had left she felt very, very alone.

This was all too familiar to Sansa now. Though it hadn’t happened for a while. Walking into a throne room devoid of life. Joffrey was there with his Kingsguard but still… Devoid of life. The empty people who made up the court were standing around… But still… Devoid of life. All the pretty patterns which once decorated the room when Sansa first arrived in the capitol were long gone. Now it was all darkness and Lion sigils. She walked with deep trepidation towards to the steps of the throne. Her footsteps echoing ominously as she walked only adding to the deep dread in her soul. 

Lancel Lannister, a nasty little wormy sycophant walked forth when she paused at the bottom of the steps. Being surveyed, appraised and judged by the men above her. 

“The honored seat of The Crag has fell to Robb Stark and his traitor’s army,” he announced loudly as the court whispered disapprovingly. “It is said he used some foreign sorcery to send men up ladders who turned into wolves as they attacked the brave defenders.” More gasps. As if these people truly believed such nonsense. Robb won because Robb is clearly the greater tactician and warrior. “Then after the carnage and slaughter the Northmen killed the prisoners and feasted on their flesh!” Lancel concluded dramatically. Sansa burned internally with hatred towards every single person in the room though that was mutual.

She fell to her knees. 

“You will need to be punished for these crimes!” Joffrey announced to general agreement from the court. 

“Your grace I had no part in my traitor’s brothers crimes,” she pleaded. 

“You are of the North and the North committed these crimes. Ser Meryn, teach her a lesson!” Joffrey hopped up and down on his arse a little with excitement. If you love violence so much you shouldn’t have fled the walls when Stannis landed Sansa thought bitterly. 

The Kingsguard walked down the steps.

“Remember to leave her face,” Joffrey called and the courtiers tittered with approval at their King’s cruel jape. 

Ser Meryn smiled at her as he had every time he had hit her. He drew his sword and Sansa prepared for the hard cold steel to strike her. Closing her eyes. Instead it didn’t come. Instead she heard Ser Meryn cry out in pain. Cry out a lot more than she ever had. Peeking one eye open she saw the Kingsguard wincing in pain. 

“Hit her Ser Meryn!” The King became shrill with anger. 

The knight raised his sword high and as he brought it down to hit Sansa he screamed and fell over. Crashing in his armor and pathetically mewling in agony on the floor. 

Silence swept over the room again. A deep silence as if all the air had been sucked out. 

“Sorcery!”

“Sorcery!”

“Witchcraft!”


	3. Fangs and Claws

“What was that?”

No response. Just sullen trudging through shit filled fields and shit covered bridges and pushing through hedgerows which Jaime suspected were coated in shit too. They hadn’t spoken since dawn. Huddling down in the back of their little cave until moonlight was replaced with sunlight and they moved very speedily as far from that place as possible.

However the monster in the night seemed a lot less real and threatening in the day.

“A relative of yours perhaps?” Jaime carried on needling Brienne of Tarth as she pulled the rope he was bound to her by harder. “A suitor? Should I be worried?”

“Why would you need you to be jealous Kingslayer?” She finally replied angrily.

“If your brother sees me with you he might get the wrong idea and attack,” Jaime stated matter-of-factly just to be even more sarcastic. 

“Can you take nothing seriously Kingslayer?”

“We are the only two people here, you don’t have to call me… that, every time,” Jaime snapped. She had managed to get on his nerves right back. She just turned her neck to turn up her lip in disdain. “What am I supposed to take seriously now?”

“What?!” Brienne skidded to a halt and turned on her heel to glower at Jaime. He just shrugged. “Don’t be a prick all of the time Kingslayer. We saw something. It looked like a huge…”

“What?”

“I don’t know…”

“I’m not going to be fearful of something I don’t know of. If there was anything at all.”

“I suppose when you grabbed at my wrist and moved behind me… That was to use me as a shield from the wind was it?” Brienne retorted. “We saw something from a bygone era.”

“Pfft, a bygone era. I remember being taught about White Walkers and Snarks and Krakens but I don’t remember meshed up men and animals,” Jaime tried to wrestle control back of the conversation. “Besides. I’m unarmed. Been in captivity for who knows how bloody long my mind might play tricks on me.”

“Unbelievable.”

“A giant man bear… Thing? Yes I would agree that is unbelievable,” Jaime was pleased he had won back the high ground of the conversation. 

“Very well Kingslayer. Very Well. When it comes time to camp tonight I shall find shelter and leave you outside,” Brienne told him with a grimace Jaime suspected was meant to be a smug smile. 

“No need to be petulant.”

“The irony.”

* * *

“What happened?” Catelyn Stark eyed Robb with both concern and disapproval. “You can’t just disappear! If you hadn’t won so many battles already you might have a bloody mutiny on your hands!”

“I… I was very sick,” Robb spoke slowly and carefully. Grey Wind mewled with disbelief and Robb shot him a dirty look. 

“Where were you?”

“Look mother, let’s just chalk this up to a freak occurrence,” Robb pleaded. Wait a second, this was the person who freed Jaime Lannister! He shouldn’t allow her to push him around. “I didn’t find the Kingslayer though,” he instantly regretted that childish attempt at a barb. 

“Your grace!” The Greatjon boomed as he entered the tent. His sword smeared with blood was resting against his shoulder. Proudly showing it off. “This wormy little chap, what was his bloody name?! Spicer! That was it. He yielded the castle almost immediately.”

“Excellent. I must apolo…”

“No need your grace, we’ve all had the shits time from time… Sorry for my language my lady,” the Greatjon bowed his head to Catelyn Stark. 

It wasn’t the most royal reason to miss a battle. However it was even less royal to crawl under a tent with no shoes on. So overall, with all things considered this was a win. 

“Allow me to change into some proper clothes and I’ll join you in a moment,” Robb nodded. “Lord Umber,” he called as his general went to leave, “good work.” The giant man beamed like a giddy child with pride. “Once we accept this surrender I can spare men to escort you back to Riverrun,” he turned his attention back to his mother. 

Before she could reply a cook brought a plate of what was basically a raw steak. His mother scowled and left. 

“Is this too rare your grace?”

“Erm… No… Thanks,” Robb took it, and scampered to the back of his tent where his bed was. It smelled amazing. Grey Wind had followed him and was sniffing around his meal too. He lifted the plate up high as his wolf hopped up onto the bed next to him to get a better reach. “Come on boy,” he pleaded. Grey Wind whined discontentedly and lay down on the bed and snuggled himself into the sheets. 

An hour later when Robb was fully dressed in his armor and crown and walking to accept the surrender of The Crag however all he could think about was how good that steak was. If not a bit overcooked… Once he was finished tearing at the meat with his teeth, holding it in his hands like a feral person, he drunk the small pool of blood the steak had left. 

“This is Rolph Spicer your grace,” the Greatjon pointed to a shifty looking man. They met under the walls of the Crag as its defenders lined up without weapons and its lords and ladies stood a few paces back from Spicer. 

Robb paused for a few moments. Not for any sort of dramatic effect. Just so he didn’t fall over from his exhaustion. As he tried to stop his mind swimming as Grey Wind padded softly forwards towards this Castellan. He sniffed the terrified man then growled, deep, inside his belly. 

Do not trust this man.

Robb just accepted this instinct. 

“Your grace?” Ser Spicer mumbled through his fear. “I would like to surrender on behalf of my captured Lord, The Crag to the King in the North.”

King of the North was yelled by the Northmen. Robb barely heard them. Everything sounded as if he were listening while submerged in water. 

“Very well Ser, thank you,” Robb nodded at him. Hoping he didn’t look like he was going to be sick.

“This is Lady Spicer and Jeyne Westerling,” he waved back at the nobles behind him.

“Charmed,” Robb mumbled this time not even looking. “Lord Umber, I trust you can proceed from here?”

“Yes your grace.”

 

* * *

 

I could taste the air of the city. It was violent and vibrant life. My heightened smell allowed me to feel through my senses. Like a musician's sheet. I was reading individual notes of the symphony which denoted life itself while being wrapped in the embrace of its totality. Death smelled amazing. Like life to me. 

Death.

I am.

Death.

I moved ethereally. Like a cloud of vapor rather than a lady. Coming here and going there at will and disguised in the cloak of my own condition. After that appalling mummer’s show the Lannister’s called court I needed an escape. My escape was the depth of the evening. As the sun set the dark spread and my realm expanded. The blackness of night was my army conquering all before me and making it safe for me.

“Foul forces are at work!”

There it was. What I was looking for. That one voice preaching against sorcery. 

With all the noises and the hustle and bustle of King’s Landing it was hard to pick out. Like catching one raindrop in a thunderstorm. I caught it though and woe to the man who spoke it that I had. 

Death.

I am.

Death.

Hooded and shawled no one paid me much mind as I glided through the shit covered streets, far past the acceptable boundaries for a highborn girl like myself. 

“Demons and Devils!”

One thing I shall grant to religious maniacs is the fact they do have a flare for the dramatic. 

“Horror and sorcery!”

I found my quarry. A tall middle aged chap. Wearing the simple robes of the Sparrows. There was quite a crowd listening to him ramble on about evil… EVIL! It was tedious and dull. I suppose they mean the same thing but in my defense this moron was using a lot of synonyms. I just needed to wait. 

When the crowd dispersed I approached.

“Hey, I loved your speech,” I told him, trying to sound ditzy and dumb. “You are sooooo right,” I told him, making intense eye contact, blinking slowly and deliberately pushing some loose strands of hair behind my ear. 

“Oh, well, thank you, thank you very much…” He fished for my name. 

Shit. Really should have prepared. Think of a common name.

“Shae.”

“Thank you Shae, I’m Brother Bryce, senior Sparrow,” he bragged. “It is getting darker Shae, we should be off the streets… I know a nice little watering hole if you care to hear more of the gods?”

“Oh! Really?” I squealed a little with happiness. “Of course.” I linked my arm with his. His heart was beating a little quicker now. With excitement not with fear. For now. “So what are these demons milord?”

“Oh, I’m not a… Well,” Bryce clearly decided he liked being called a lord. “Well I’m afraid such details are held by the Sparrows… I shouldn’t really tell you…” I squeezed his arm and got a little closer to him. “But if we are going to get the support decent people I suppose it couldn’t hurt.”

“You can trust me,” I straight up lied. It was an absolute lie.

Death.

I am.

Death.

“Well we aren’t too sure exactly what lurks in the shadows because they you know? They live in the shadows,” Bryce’s tone changed, and began speaking the same way the maester of Highgarden used when he taught me history. “However we know they are ugly twisted things which look human but prey on humans.”

“Ugly, twisted things?” I asked, trying to sound stupid and incredulous. Hiding my instinct to laugh. 

“Oh yes,” Bryce confirmed with an authoritative nod as we turned down a road into an empty alley. “What’s wrong?” He asked as I stopped and unlooped my arm from his. 

Pulling down my shawl I turned to him. He shuddered a little. 

“Do I look twisted and ugly?” I asked in a soft, scared tone.

“No! Of course not! You’re gorgeous.”

“Well if I’m not twisted and ugly,” my tone changed. “Then you don’t know anything about the darkness do you?” I laughed happily. “Let me educate you.” Before he could open his mouth to respond I lifted him up by his throat. As his feet dangled searching without success for the safety of the floor. “If there are demons. If there are monsters who prey on flesh why the hell would you make those ‘monsters,’ your enemy?”

I waited for a moment.

“No answer?” I taunted him cruelly. This wasn’t who I was normally, but I wasn’t attacking these people they were attacking me. For no reason. Retribution isn’t is evil. Tightening my grip on his throat I forced him to look me directly in the face. Smiling I let my fangs elongate. Tearing and hurting my gums as the sharp, white daggers appeared. My eyes darkened and his eye’s filled with fear. 

The blood poured from the fresh wound I tore in his neck. It had been a bit too long and I felt powerful again. Almost felt alive. He dropped, limp under my grip but I continued. When he was dead I let go. 

In one motion I had let go of my foe and was moving at a speed which Balerion the Dread would envy. In the time it would take to walk five yards I had travelled over a mile. Back in the Red Keep. I let many guards and knights see me walk through the castle. So everyone knew I was here.

“Good evening grandmother!” I said cheerily as I entered her chambers. My mood was rapture. Before what happened to me happened to me I enjoyed many things. Dancing, food and drink all brought me great joy. These pursuits paled in comparison to fresh blood. “How are you tonight?”

“What did you do?”

“Pardon me?”

“Oh drop it girl, no one else is here. What. Did. You. Do?” Olenna asked me. She was very aggravated. 

“What?” I asked slowly. I had learned growing up and being prepared for court that one should never reveal more than necessary. It was strange. Five minutes ago I was indulging the most monstrous aspect of my new nature and now I was an awkward little girl squirming under the gaze of my grandmother. 

“Ser Meryn Trant.”

“The Kingsguard? What about him.”

“Fine be all coy and innocent with me if you like my dear but it is Sansa Stark who will suffer.”

“What happened grandmother? Is Sansa alright?!?!?!”

 

* * *

“Jeyne Westerling has requested an audience your grace,” a man-at-arms spoke to Robb at the entrance to his tent. He had been spending too much time inside there recently. 

“Very well.”

Robb quickly splashed some water over his face. The taste of vomit was still stinging his throat and back of his mouth. It was appalling. The night was soon upon him again and despite having no idea what was occurring somehow he knew the blackness of night was bringing something with it. 

“Your grace?” A girl’s voice broke his contemplation. 

Robb looked up towards the entrance to his tent. He saw a pretty girl. Not stunning but cute enough, waiting for him. 

“Lady Westerling?” He asked, she nodded, “please come in.” 

“Thank you your grace,” she walked in, and came a little too close to him. “I just wished to speak to you.” Through the gap in his tent Robb could see night had pretty much fallen and the full moon was ascending to its zenith. “To tell you how glad I am you came to the Crag.” He was barely listening. His guts had begun to start bubbling and burning. “I have heard of your exploits and after living for so many years under the yoke of the Lannisters we are all so glad a hero like you has come to rescue us.” Oh gods, Robb held his stomach, suddenly he remembered the other night. Remembered the pain and heat. “Your grace?”

She placed a soft hand on his forearm and without thinking he growled… Like his wolf. She recoiled in horror. 

It was unexplainable. 

Robb was still there but he no longer felt like he was inhabiting his body as he snatched Jeyne Westerling by both her wrists and pulled her in front of him. She was trembling with fear. 

“Do not think you can manipulate me girl,” a deeper, more animalistic voice came from him. He didn’t choose to say those words. Nor did he choose to grab this young lady. Yet he still did or something in him did. He violently twisted his head to the side and his bones cracked like they no longer fitted inside him. “Get. Out!”

She fled. He heard her burst into tears several yards away. He shouldn’t be able to hear that. Should he? The heat was getting too much. His skin was an inferno. Silly girl trying to trick him like he couldn’t recognize bullshit he would FUCKING KILL HER FUCK FUCKING HER UP. No that wasn’t the Stark way. AHH! The Fuck was happening. His bones were stretching? Surely not. 

Robb was breaking again. He stumbled and tripped like a drunken fool. Grabbing hold of the shield which was mounted on his tent’s wall to steady himself he took a few breathes. It didn’t help and in his pain he snapped the steel circle in half… 

What the fuck.That was castle forged steel and he broke it like stale straw. 

Picking up his mirror from his desk Robb stared at his reflection. His vision was blurry. As if he had just slept for several days. Yet despite all that he could see enough to be concerned.

More than concerned.

His teeth felt like they were breaking. He had been punched in the face a few times. When he used to fight with Theon and beat him, Theon would get a few shots in. Also when he fought with Jon and Jon beat him bloody.

Robb’s gums burned with agony. As if four or five teeth were trying to push through the gap meant for a single tooth. 

No that couldn’t be?!?! 

His teeth were growing into points. They looked like Grey Wind’s, just bigger and sharper and… In his bloody mouth. 

A loud crack broke Robb’s concentration. As if he just got hit in the back with a mace; his spine twisted. 

The mirror fell, shattered and unnoticed by the King in the North. As his body contorted and was broken to bits.

He acutely remembered dark, thick hair blossoming under his skin as his flesh melted away, his flesh melted away and reality shortly followed. 

 

* * *

 

“He didn’t strike you! So what’s the problem?”

Sansa stared at Shae for a couple moments before replying.

“They say my brother is using sorcery to win this war and then a Kingsguard seemingly falls under the power of a spell by MY feet…” Sansa said. She was completely exasperated. “This will be blamed on me…”

“I don’t think so,” Shae tried to comfort her. “Look the Tyrells are here so the royal family are trying to be less monstrous.”

“Beating me for my family's’ sins was monstrous. When the people are looking for blood. When dark forces are at work… Well then it will be easier to blame me!” Sansa cried out in frustration. It was such a mess that she was now in a position where she would prefer a beating to accusations of sorcery. 

“That might not…” Shae bowed her head. Then nodded to herself. “Yes, you will be blamed. You will probably be beaten. Sorry my lady, but this will happen.”

“No! No! No! You’re not hearing me!” Sansa wanted to scream, but that would bring the Red Cloaks into her chamber to beat her. “Ser Meryn looked like he was under some spe…”

The snap rapping knock at the door made both women squeak and squeal with surprise after being so wrapped up in their own conversation. 

“Yes?” Sansa called through the door. 

“You’re presence is requested my lady.”

Sometimes Sansa was thankful for the pretence of the civility and courtly manners as it protected her. Times like now she loathed them. Her presence wasn’t requested it was demanded and if she refused she would be hurt and forced to come anyway. Though complying oft lead to violence against her anyway. A lose lose. 

She dreamed of the day Robb battered down the doors and killed every bastard in Red. 

Shae tried to give her an encouraging smile before she opened the door but it didn’t help. She followed the Red Cloaks through the Red Keep to the Tower of the Hand. Sansa hadn’t been there since her father was its occupant. 

If she was scared before she was positively trembling when she got to the top of the tower. At least her brother had a sword in his hand when he went into terrifying situations. 

Tywin Lannister was an imposing figure. Like a King and myth mixed together. 

“Come closer Lady Stark,” he spoke softly yet his voice carried and resonated with deep power. It wasn’t until she had gotten closer Sansa even noticed the Queen and Joffrey and the Kingsguard there. So imposing was presence of Tywin. “Ser Meryn come hither,” the Hand of the King snapped to the lumbering knight who moved forward. “Go and hit the girl.”

“Stop! Wait!” 

She hadn’t seen Tyrion either until he spoke. 

“She is innocent and this is beneath our dignity,” the dwarf spoke up for her. 

“Aw are you fond of the girl?” Cersei taunted.

She was now caught in a family feud. That was just great… No. It wasn’t. It was the opposite of that. 

“Is decency so alien to you sister? Well after seeing the harvest of your parenting…” Tyrion shot back.

“How dare you!” Joffrey tore into action.

“SIT DOWN!” Tywin commanded and the King did. “Ser Meryn strike Lady Stark.”

The Kingsguard walked directly up to her. Towering over her, his bulk enhanced by his armor. He balled his fist up and cocked his arm back and went to hit her in the gut.

Sansa scrunched her eyes tight and tightened her muscles, trained by experience.

Except the blow never came she opened her eyes to see Trant doubled over holding his stomach. 

“Hit her!” Tywin bellowed. Meryn stood clearly in pain and raised his mailed fist to backhand Sansa directly in the face but as he went to swing he flew backwards and collapsed in a heap of steel. He whined and moaned in pain. “So it is true.”

“What is true? What? I shouldn’t be left in the dark,” Joffrey piped up once more.

“Be quiet. I don’t have time to entertain you at the moment,” Tywin put the King down. “Thank you for coming here Lady Stark you may return to your chambers. Oh one more thing my lady. Have you heard the name Brother Bryce?”

“No?”

“Nevermind then. Thank you for your time.”

Sansa rushed from the Tower of the Hand but didn’t return to her chambers immediately. Instead she found a balcony in the Red Keep which looked out on the Blackwater Rush. She needed some time to think. However it didn’t help. Her mind couldn’t process what happened. The harder she tried to concentrate the more muddled her mind became.

“Oi!” 

Sansa almost shit herself, so deep in her own mind the outside world startled her. A Red Cloak was walking towards her with a purpose. Before she could say a word he barged his way into her personal space and picked her up by the throat. With her feet kicking; reaching for the floor and her oxygen supply evaporating she struggled.

“You bitch! Do you know who my brother was? No? Of course you fuckin’ don’t. Cunt!” The Lannister man-at-arms screeched hysterically. “I had three brothers! Three! Your father killed one fighting Ser Jaime. One died at Oxcross. Bryce was my last relative!” The man’s voice was breaking. Tears were clearly almost breaking out of his eyes. “Your sorcery killed him!” He screamed. 

Sansa felt her life leaving her as he squeezed tighter on her neck.

“You killed Bryce you witch!” He yelled throwing her to the ground. Sansa’s back hit the balcony hard, so hard something cracked. “Bryce was good. He was a holy man and you killed him with your evil witchcraft!” This Red Cloak drew his sword. “You killed Bryce!” He lunged with his blade and Sansa closed her eyes waiting for the finality she wasn’t ready for. 

Nothing happened.

Opening one eye tentatively she saw the soldier had turned to face the corridor from which the balcony protruded. 

 

* * *

Walking at night cloaked and hooded I felt liberated. It was freedom. When the darkness wrapped its comforting blanket around me I fell it into the abyss and felt liberated.

Coming back to the Red Keep I removed my shawl and the guards bowed and scraped in front of me. Despite the fact I could still taste the beautiful copper of blood in my mouth. After feeding my confidence exploded. I want to dance in the moonlight or sing an ode to the blackness itself.

“Oi!”

I heard that.

Oh yes I heard that.

In a flash I disappeared and reappeared several storeys away in a second. 

A Lannister soldier was choking Sansa Stark. Another dead man. As my grandmother told me once. Women try to fill men’s heads with sense but they long for the grave irregardless. This man clearly longed to be ashes.

“You killed Bryce!”

I grabbed the man by the shoulder. I put my fingers into his shoulder, the tips of my fingers went deep into his skin right through his armor. He fell to his knees in pain.

“She didn’t kill Bryce,” I told him as he looked up from his knees at me. “I did.” The shock on his face was satisfying for a moment before I threw him a hundred yards into the air off the balcony. I changed my tone, my bestial nature retreated, my humanity took over. Lady Stark was broken to pieces after being tossed into the stone of the balcony. “Sansa?!”

 

 

 

 

“SANSA?!?!”


	4. You Know What Blood Begets?

Flesh.

 

Flesh.

 

Flesh.

 

I need FUCKING FLESH! FLESH! FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK!

AHHHHHHH!

No flesh. Water will do.

Some cool water.

Then FLESH! FUCKING TEAR AND RIP AND RENDER FLESH FROM BONES!

The pool of water smelled like lilies and frogspawn. 

Padding up to the liquid I lapped up the cool substance. Until I was sated. Then I could pause for a moment.

I looked into the water and saw my reflection.

A giant wolf looked back at me. Waving a hand. No. Not a hand. Waving a paw the reflection reacted to my actions.

The moment of awareness disappeared as quickly as it arrived. A spark on a flint.

Flesh.

I need.

Flesh.

* * *

 

“Sansa?!”

The redheaded girl was weeping. She must be in pain. After all the physical abuse she had suffered for her to cry she must be in real agony. I was panicking a little. I know death I don’t know life. I needed to help her though. 

“Sansa?!?!?!??!?!”

No reply. Instead just crying and rolling around in pain… The body of the soldier who did this to her would have splattered several moments ago… He deserved his fate. Lady Stark did not.

As she writhed in pain, whimpering, I could hear the bones in her spine cracking awkwardly. She was broken.

…

Shit. 

Right have to fix this…

Shit.

….

Right.

Shit.

Shit.

I scooped her up in my arms. She was taller than me by half a head so I had to be careful not to knock her as I left the balcony. No one was directly around but I could hear heartbeats, coughs and mumbled conversations coming from all directions. This was something I had learned very speedily to block out. When whatever happened to me first happened to me I felt like I was being beaten down into submission by the noise of the world. Now I needed it. 

Footsteps… Coming down towards this particular corridor. Armored footsteps at that. I took the now unconscious Sansa Stark back onto the balcony and jumped from that balcony to one further down the outside of the Red Keep. Covering fifty yards in a jump. 

Soon I was back in Sansa’s chambers. Having not entered through the front door. I placed her softly onto her bed. I glanced at my wrist… If she was really hurt I had a solution.

“Where does it hurt?” I asked frantically, turning back into the girl I used to be. Uncertain and skittish. So much so that when her handmaiden Shae entered the room I was shocked. Normally it would be impossible to sneak up on me. “Shae!” 

“What happened?” She asked in her thick accent, her eyes widening as surveyed the scene. “Joffrey?”

“A Lannister.”

“Joffrey?”

“He isn’t a Lan… Whatever it doesn’t matter. She’s hurt her back, I don’t know what to do!” 

“It’s fine m’lady, let me look. I’ve seen horror beyond this before,” Shae gently pushed me out the way and I let her do so. She kneaded her fingers down Sansa’s spine as the young girl whimpered, still yet to speak. “She’s alright, just injured.”

“Alright? What does that even mean?” I asked. Was it alright all things considered, alright as in bad but not fatal or alright as in completely fine. I didn’t get an answer. The cloud of worry was finally dispersing inside my head and I calmed down. I could hear heartbeats again. Like a noise carrying down a hall through an echo my sense spread back out throughout the Red Keep in a ripple.

That was better.

“You should go m’lady,” Shae told me. I just nodded and compiled. 

I didn’t return to my chambers. They were on the other side of the castle. In a far more prominent place. A place from which I couldn’t monitor Sansa’s room. 

Nothing happened all night. When the sun came up I was exhausted. It was true I didn’t need to sleep much, but I did now and again. Especially during the day but my lifestyle didn’t prohibit for that. 

So all sleepy and annoyed with frayed nerves I went to break my fast with my family. No one was there except my grandmother.

“Oh so good of you to come my dear, I thought I would have to eat with the handmaidens,” Olenna said, her eyes sparkling. I just grumbled in response. “Hungover? Oh wait, can you get hangover? Actually I don’t want to know.” 

“Just tired,” I told her playing with my food. Considering eating something just to make myself sick so I had an excuse to retire for the day. 

“Huh. Well while you have been doing gods-know-what, I have had, what is it Varys says, whispers? It matters not.”

“This involves me?”

“Not directly, however the fact Tywin bloody Lannister is now considering certain possibilities which were once unthinkable in the Seven Kingdoms is quite serious,” Olenna said. This sounded like I was being reprimanded. Eugh. I just zoned her out. 

 

* * *

“We should go,” Jaime hissed.

“Yes, yes,” Brienne replied absentmindedly. 

Jaime was nervous of recapture. He would never admit it but if he was captured again then the Starks would most likely nail him to a wall of the deepest dungeon of Riverrun.

His brutish companion was fixated on the view beneath them. From their raised vantage point in the forests of the Riverlands they could see the snaking trail of the Northern army on the move. 

“If we leave now I promise to tell you all about battles and swords and that stuff little boys normally like,” Jaime pressed.

“If you shut up,” Brienne was barely paying attention. She was staring with starey eyes. Despite acknowledging him she made no movement. 

Jaime grabbed her arm and yanked back as hard as he could with shackled hands. 

She made a louder noise than he would have liked as they both tumbled backwards from the rocky perch they had chosen. 

“Ow,” Jaime groaned, picking himself up from the mud where he fell. Both elbows bruised and grazed. “That hurt.”

“Why in the seven hells did you do that?!” Brienne snapped, picking herself up and dusting off her armor. Her fists were clenched with anger. 

“Do you want to strike me? You do, I can see it in your eyes,” Jaime teased her.

“Do a lot of people want to strike you kingslayer,” Brienne retorted trying to look calmer and more relaxed but failed miserably. She was clearly annoyed.

“Pretty much, jealousy breeds anger,” he replied checking his nails, as if they had been clean in an age.

“Jealously?! You! Jealousy?!” She stammered. 

“Now a thank you?”

“For what?!”

“For saving our arses? Perhaps that little matter,” he drawled slowly. 

“What?”

“The longer you openly stand in a raised place in armor which reflects light the more chance a scout would see you and send troops up here,” Jaime explained. Trying to make it sound like he was talking to an imbecile. 

“I... That’s beside… Whatever,” Brienne just ended up with a snarl unable to find the words.

“How haven’t we been caught yet? Bloody amateur.”

“I have been a lot nicer to you than most Kingslayer,” Brienne snapped. “I didn’t get all the soldier training. While you have had…”

“Shhhh.”

“How dare you?” Brienne was trembling with rage now.

“There look,” Jaime pointed. The cockiness gone from his voice. Brienne was still scowling with fury and hatred but glanced where Jaime was pointing. Her anger went. It would.

The fresh paw print left in the mud by their feet was huge as were the ones which trailed away, deeper into the woods. 

Wordlessly they both stared for a moment before looking at each other and moving in unison, quickly away. The large Northern host suddenly became a secondary distraction as the pair disappeared into the overgrowth.

* * *

 

“You’ll be alright my lady,” a voice broke the grey and black haze which her mind felt like it was swimming inside. “I have seen worse. Hells, even you have suffered worse!”

“Water.”

“Here.”

Sansa sipped at the cup when the cool metal touched her lips she shivered. Still unable, well at least unwilling, to open her eyes. Her back was aching. Right above her buttock, a dull ache which shuddered and trembled itself a path down to her foot as well. 

“You can rest my lady.”

It was Shae’s voice. Sansa recovered enough to notice the accent of her medic and her heart panged with appreciation. 

The dark and grey haze became blacker and swallowed her up into a deep yet strangely uncomfortable sleep. It could have been a few seconds it could have been a week when a crash made Sansa bolt up. Completely awake now. The door almost fell from its hinges as two Lannister soldiers burst in. Even with the fresh pain and even with the yellow spots exploding across her vision Sansa felt fear. 

“Lady Stark!”

“Yes sergeant,” she replied steadily. Trying her best to remember her upbringing and sound courtly rather than weak and pathetic. 

“Your handmaiden, where is she?”

“Pardon me?”

“Your handmaiden… My lady,” the soldiers said. He was on edge but still respectful at least. 

“I am here,” Shae’s distinct voice came from just beside Sansa’s table. Sansa had to awareness of her room. Having being in an unpleasant dreamscape for however long. 

“You are under arrest.”

“On what charges?” Shae spluttered. Sansa felt a bit bad. This was her role. Her mother and her father had always taught her it was right and proper to defend one’s servants. To treat them as an extension of your own family. She just couldn’t. 

Once again. Little Sansa Stark couldn’t be brave once again. Her brother was fighting. Her sister was alive, DEFINITELY, and she was meek again.

“The murder of a man called Brother Bryce of the church,” the soldier said. Despite arresting Shae for murder it didn’t stop him for raking her eyes over her body. 

“Who?” Sansa and Shae both said in unison. 

No reply came. Shae was taken off after Sansa asked her not to struggle, the sort of vapid advice only she could offer. 

Sitting on her bed she started sobbing. It came over her all of a sudden. Just sitting one moment then floods and cascades of salty, bitter tears. They were about anything in particular. Not even Shae’s arrest. Just the totality of her soul crushing existence colliding with her pathetic inability to act. 

The right thing.

That concept hung heavy over her. She knew what it was. 

Yet reaching up and having the courage to seize it was too much and rolling over and balling up was all she could muster within herself. In order to reach and do the right thing one has to put oneself on a pedestal, which everyone could see. Far easier to meekly reside in the passiveness of the shadows. Easier but not better.

She kept doing the easy thing because she didn’t want problems and yet that road had led to the worst possible scenario for her. 

This seemed especially true when she wept. Just her body mocking her.

“Hey stupid you are crying like the feeble wimp you are.”

“Yes!” Was all she could reply to her own inner monologue. 

The Hound called her a ‘little bird,’ that was true. She was. She could do no damage. All she could do was look nice and hope no one tried to pluck her wings. Never flying high enough to reach the right thing, as it still dangled, in perpetuity above her head. 

“Fly from danger and hope a nice owner puts you in a silver cage.” 

“No!” Sansa’s mind exploded again, except not in pain, with an idea. A little bird maybe unable to do any damage. However they certainly could deliver messages to those who could do damage. 

Grunting and grumbling and whining and whimpering she pushed her pain racked body up and dressed the best she could. Time to find help for someone who had given her naught but help. 

 

* * *

“We got, fuck, the fuck was his fucking name…”

“Loras Tyrell?”

“Aye that’s the little bleeder. Him.”

“‘im?! That’s your pick? Lil’ pretty boy loving dandy?”

“Would you fight ‘im then?”

“Well… No. He’d cut us both t’e ribbons.”

“See!”

“See what? We’re just common infantry. We’re talkin’ ‘bout the best. Our man Jaime.”

“If he ever gets out.”

“The Mountain.”

“Of course.”

“Oi!” A deeper, older voice cut through the soldier’s conversation. “Stop bloody nattering.”

“Yes Corporal.”

“Sorry Corporal.”

“That Stark lad is known to attack out of nowhere, so don’t fuck us,” the officer commanded. “The lookouts at Oxcross or the Golden Tooth mighta been yammerin’ on ‘bout whether Loras Tyrell could beat Ser Jaime in a fight when the wolves descended. It don’t matter. What matters is we get home to see our families. So shut up! And keep your eyes out there,” the corporal snapped, pointing out past the walls of the castle. “Better you lads be a bit bored now and again then dead. AND! It don’t bleedin’ matter if a Kraken can beat a Dragon or any of this nonsen… What?” The corporal asked as the two watchmen he was in the midst of berating froze. 

The growl they all heard was chilling. It wasn’t loud but deep. Made their bones vibrate. 

The noise was nothing.

The hand, which was not human, looked it, but was four times the size, covered in jet black hair, with sagittate nails or claws the size of bodkin arrow heads was truly chilling. The hand which stretched out in a fan was spread out over the stone battlements. For a second. Then it strained. The muscle and sinew pulling up a hulking head.

The men tried to scream.

They couldn’t.

It’s quite hard without a throat and especially hard without a ribcage. Any noise which escaped the severed holes which were their windpipes may have made a noise but that was drowned out by actual screams and cries and the alarm being sounded.

None of it did any of them any good. 

* * *

“Fuck,” Roose Bolton murmured under his breath. 

It was the first time Robb had heard the Leech Lord swear. If the scene before them made the usually stoic man swear it had struck the rest of Northern lords dumb. Robb was shattered. He hadn’t slept well. He had had another of his turns and woke up on the floor of his tent covered in mud and blood. A lot of both but more of the latter. 

The Banefort was a ruin. Well no, actually the castle was in decent shape. The garrison however was ruined. 

Appalling ruined.

The soldiers looked toy soldiers who had been smashed under a meat hammer. Broken and bent and dismembered and just… Well; broken. The blood coated the walls and the barracks and the courtyard. It coated nearly everything. Dry and black now. Cracking disconcertingly under foot.

“Who could have done this?” Robb asked his generals. As a flash of a memory, like a ghost drifted into his head. A fork lightening of a memory. A vivid and impressive flash but then gone as if it had never been there. Robb thought of himself climbing the walls and attacking those within. 

“The Ironborn?” One of the Frey’s piped up.

“They wouldn’t attack the Lannisters lad? You going spare?”

“Who else old man?”

“Who you callin’ old you little weasel.”

“Quite enough! Curb your tempers in front of the King.”

“Why don’t…”

Robb tuned it out. Or it was tuned out. As he pictured himself, once more, climbing those walls behind him, slicing and striking out at the soldiers. Then… Then eating some of their flesh. He almost gagged but managed to suppress it. 

The argument between his men continued as he tried his hardest not to pass out or vomit. His anger began rising as the confusing flashes of pseudo-memories began to disperse. 

All of the weakness and wooziness was gone and now just anger. He felt stronger than ever before. Full of vigor and righteousness. It was very strange. To switch moods and constitutions so speedily. 

He turned on his heel. He had been leading his lords and generals and honored soldiers into the castle and they were no longer following but arguing. 

He had to deal with this stuff constantly. People said the Northerners were the most loyal of any Kingdom. However Robb truly doubted Tywin Lannister had to deal with so much dissent. So much bellyaching and whining. Too much pride. None of them would back down an inch to the others due to their pride. None of them would be happy with the direction of the military campaign because their pride told them they and they alone knew best.

It was bullshit.

His mother released the Kingslayer and his generals bickered like stall merchants. 

How he was winning this war Robb did not know. Perhaps he had just had a perfect streak of luck and he could fuck it up at any moment.

“You need to watch your mouth Frey!”

Robb tuned the infuriating argument back in and found two of the interchangeable Freys, he never bothered to learn their names, squaring up to Greatjon Umber. 

Before he could command them to stop the trio had started shoving each other and cursing each other. Robb strode towards them, ready to break up the childish display. Four yards away one of the Frey knights was shoved hard towards him. He bumped off Robb’s chest and reacting instinctively he turned and pushed the King before he even checked who it was. Robb didn’t move even an eighth of an inch but when he pushed back the Frey knight flew 7-8 yards throw the air and tumbled and rolled painfully on the ground.

Robb did not want his generals arguing, true, he wanted them to stop. However having them all turn in a crescent moon around him, staring in disbelief wasn’t the method he wanted. 

No one spoke, no one moved for several, excruciating minutes. 

Finally Roose Bolton spoke.

“What should we say happened here your grace?”

Robb pivoted on his heel, surveying the brutality once more. He felt innately responsible. Not sorry. Not regretful nor disgusted. Just responsible. 

“That winter came for House Banefort.”

* * *

“Come on shift your arse.”

“Hmmmm.”

“My lord. Shift your arse, my lord,” Bronn corrected sarcastically. “Your lord father wants ya.”

Tyrion rolled out of his bed and gagged as his feet touched the floor. His chamber was cold. The only cold chamber in the whole Red Keep. Reaching for a jug Tyrion poured the contents directly into his mouth.

“Yuck,” he spat it out.

“Wine?”

“Water!” Tyrion corrected. “I wanted wine.”

“It’s 8am.”

“Precisely.”

Bronn waited for him, with a rather smug disdain look, as Tyrion searched for a bottle with wine still in it.

“Your father is waitin’,’” Bronn pressed. 

“That’s why I need wine…”

Bronn opened his mouth to respond but closed it instead and tilted his head side to side. “Good point.”

After ten minutes of changing while swallowing acidic bursts of cheap wine they were on their way to the Red Keep. Luckily he was too hungover to worry. He was numb to the world. 

So numb in fact that when he sat among his immediate family he didn’t even mind his current proximity to his sister. 

“Late, all of you late,” Tywin spoke at last. He had made them wait. Finishing scribbling away on parchment. Tyrion doubted his father had written a thing, it was just a powerplay. “My children.” He sighed as he deliberately placed his quill back in its holder. 

“Father.”

“Wait,” he snapped at his daughter. “Wait. I am leading this meeting. We have an unpleasant and quite frankly ludacris conversation ahead of us.” Tywin snatched up a letter and handed it to Kevan who scanned it. Tyrion didn’t bother looking at his Uncle as he read. Instead, he zoned out looking at the wall. His mind swimming. 

“Another fortress?” Kevan spoke after a long moment, he had always been a slow reader. “I don’t see why this is out of the ordinary… The Young Wolf has been beating us since the Whispering Wood. Though… This is particularly barbaric. Is this true?”

“It would seem so,” Tywin replied with a curt nod directing him to pass the scroll. Uncle Kevan ignored Cersei’s outstretched hand and passed the scroll to Tyrion. “The Banefort lost. The garrison torn to shreds. Four separate spies report the same thing to Varys and two of my own.”

“This sounds like the bullshit Lancel made up at court,” Tyrion commented after scanning the bloody details of their lost stronghold. “No offence nuncle.”

“What did my son say?” Kevan asked him.

“That the Northmen used wolves as soldiers and ate the bodies of the dead,” Tyrion said as Kevan laughed mildly and his sister managed to radiate a wave of anger. “Presumably Robb Stark just used his superior military mind to overwhelm whoever was guarding our coast.”

“You are both fools! Aren’t they father?” Cersei finally broke and ripped the paper from Tyrion and read it as she spoke. That was typical Cersei, Tyrion reflected, she hadn’t even read the information but thought she knew best. “You two laugh and can’t take anything seriously but remember what happened to Ser Trant? That guard and that priest? They don’t get it do they father?”

“You oughtn’t to speak to me like that niece, I have been fighting a war for you and your son.”

“If we are going to throw around kudos here, I would again, point out my role in the Battle of the Blackwater.”

“Oh yes you’re great contributions, if father hadn’t arri…”

“Silence!” Tywin didn’t shout but they fell silent as if he had. “For once your sister is correct. Despite all my judgement and knowledge of the world I…” Tywin paused to rub his furrowed brow. “I believe we should consider that non-natural elements are afoot.”

Tyrion didn’t laugh but it took a lot. 

If House Lannister had been losing the war then that process would speed up quite rapidly if they put their efforts into snark and grumpkin hunts.

"I see you rolling your eyes Tyrion," his father addressed him. However the normal disdain wasn't there, he sounded as if he were genuinely trying to convince him. "A witness has been taken to the cells who may shine some light on this madness."


	5. The Lone Wolves

Sansa tried her hardest and her best not to look like a cripple as she struggled through the halls of the Red Keep. Those who passed her either ignored her or gave her some space. For once she was glad she was treated like a leper. 

“Whoa, whoa, hold on there my lady,” a tall man, armor clad man blocked her path. “Are you scheduled to meet with Lady Olenna this morning?” 

“No… erm, may I?”

She braced herself for a cruel laugh and her dismissal but it didn’t come. Instead the man smiled kindly and asked her to wait a moment and he went off. Soon she was being waved forward and found just Olenna Tyrell. She really had been hoping for Margaery.

“Come sit little dove,” the elderly matriarch waved her over with one hand and waved away her flock of handmaidens. “In pain? Margaery mentioned that the Lannister retainers are heavy handed with you.”

Sansa hummed with agreement, though heavy handed was a bit too soft of a term. 

“If only your brother would stop winning battles eh?” Olenna smiled at her, “though that seems unlikely. He took another castle. The Banefort. I’ve never been obviously. Did Joffrey take his battlefield inadequacies out on you?” 

“No, well yes,” Sansa decided that was the safest thing to say, as she chastised herself for being such an atrocious liar. 

“At this rate we’ll be trying to marry Margaery off to the Young Wolf,” Olenna sighed, “though maybe that wouldn’t be the worst thing to happen.”

“I doubt it,” Sansa mumbled. 

“Hmm?”

“Robb hasn’t sent any word, made any move towards the capitol,” Sansa blurted out. She forgot about Shae for a moment and allowed some pent up feelings out. “He’s forgotten about me.”

“If the Young Wolf marched South-East he would be trapped between Tyrell and Lannister forces, and he would die.”

That thought. Her brother dead. Made her even more sick than the thought of abandonment. 

“Now, cheer up my dear, us ladies shouldn’t concern ourselves about the wars, there’s little we can do,” Olenna said bitterly. “Now why is it Sansa Stark has found her way into my company this morning?”

“Shae!”

“Bless you.”

“No, Shae is my handmaiden. The Lannisters arrested for murder!” Sansa burbled. 

“Did she?”

“No!”

“Sure?”

“Yes!”

“Hmm. Well, a handmaiden is a small thing, with all the support House Tyrell provide the crown I’m sure they would overlook a murder or two for us,” Olenna mused. “Consider it a favor, or a gift.”

“Thank you my lady, thank you,” Sansa gushed. 

“Yes, yes,” Olenna waved it off as it were nothing. “Now stop fidgeting around and have some food girl.”

“Thank you,” Sansa just repeated, as if she were stuck on a loop. “Oh and my lady?”

“Yes?” 

“They say my brother can’t die.”

“Oh my sweet girl. All men can die even the Young Wolf, as those pretentious false poets across the Narrow Sea have a phrase for it. I swear I knew it as a younger girl,” Olenna furrowed her brow. 

I’ll have to hope he isn’t a man then. Sansa thought bitterly. Oh and he hasn’t forgotten me. 

* * *

Robb had taken the Lord’s chambers in the Banefort. They were staying for a day or so more before marching off and back to war. 

He was gnashing his teeth looking forward to more violence.

This hadn’t happened before. He had tried his hardest to follow his father’s lessons and to temper his violent desires but raw emotion was overpowering his stoic reflections. 

Robb kept telling himself to get his head together and go out there and check the troops and listen to the quarter-master and all those duties which had become regular. However he had to stop himself as he needed more time. 

He was angry.

Not at anything, not normal anger. 

He was just on edge and wanted to lash out. His heart felt like it was roaring under his ribs. Screaming at him. Trying to convey a message. 

The anger built and subsided as reason kicked in then it swarmed and regrouped and the anger took over in greater force. 

When the knock finally came at the door it wasn’t Robb Stark who opened that door.

“Your grace?”

“What?”

The soldier handed him a scroll, the seal unbroken. The man fled the second Robb took the paper. Were the men scared of him? He had been so wrapped up with his own demons as of late he hadn’t really thought of much else. 

Robb broke the seal and swore loudly as in his zeal he ripped the letter. Pushing the tear together he got even more angry. 

Fuck!

“FUCK!” He yelled it out loud that time. He slammed his forearm into the desk he’d appropriated and it broke it two. Unsatisfied. The fury still boiling inside him. The shields and swords on the wall all fell to his wrath. 

The inner anger took over and he blacked out for a few seconds or minutes or an hour who knew? 

When Robb took back control of his own mind Lord Quenten Banefort’s study was destroyed. Everything which had been hung on a wall was down and smashed to pieces. As was the furniture. Scariest of all were the giant, fist sized, holes in the walls. 

He must have done this.

How could he have done this? How did he snap that shield in his tent the other week? 

Was the massacre at the Banefort him? He felt like it was. 

In all honesty.

He wanted it to be him and he wanted to do it again but this time remember. 

Thanks to the news he received he had that opportunity. 

Edmure bloody Tully. Edmure the bloody fool had ignored his orders and chased the Mountain out of the Riverlands. All for a stone mill. 

Storming from his chamber Robb’s guards shrank away from their raging King. 

“Gather the cavalry we’re leaving.”

“Yes your grace.”

Having not left his chamber since the night before he was suddenly invigorated and motivated. More motivated than ever before. More motivated than when his father was imprisoned and he called his banners in. More motivated than the time he heard of his father’s execution. Even more so than when he became the King of Winter. 

The walls and cobbles of the Banefort were still splattered with gore. 

A month ago this would have disgusted Robb but no longer or at least not now. 

He left Lord Bolton in charge and rode off with 200 heavy horse.

His mood swing had not only affected him but clearly his men. None looked to him. His generals did not speak to him. They rode in silence. 

If Robb was sure it weren’t the case he would have thought that his men were all of a sudden uneasy around him. 

He was glad no one spoke to him. His mind was racing fast enough as it was. 

The Mountain was a monster and he needed to die and his Uncle had screwed him over. His mother lost the Kingslayer. His generals and knights couldn’t stay loyal enough to just listen to him. Then on top of that he was blacking out, his mood was swinging and the fact he was waking up covered in blood and dirt and breaking things which shouldn’t be able to be broken. 

He needed to act. Right now his mood had swung towards violence.

Robb liked it.

He truly did. That thrill which took over after the cold sweat, the heart-racing moment of an incoming blade and the joy which came from avoiding it and replying with worse. He wrote letters back to Winterfell which told Bran how woeful and melancholy the brutality of war was he was lying. He was pretending to be the man he felt he ought to be.

It was mid-afternoon but the moon was visible on the horizon, sharing the sky with the sun. 

Spurring on Robb lead his party South. 

* * *

No on was telling her anything! Not a thing! 

Sansa was angry now. Really angry. She had stood on her balcony all afternoon. The closer the night drew in the better her injury felt. 

She had started her staring with a grim determination at the Blackwater. Trying hard to have a profound thought, Sansa tried to put the pain out of her mind. Yet as the hours passed and she had counted the scorched and broken ships from Stannis’ assault several dozen times the pain was gone.

She let her hip move and put pressure through it.

No pain whatsoever. 

Was she just faking it to herself? No that couldn’t be it. She was in agony earlier. 

Nothing made sense.

Being a hostage meant no one came to see her unless it was to drag her to a punishment or a ritual humiliation so no news of Shae came.

Olenna Tyrell said she would help but no news came from her or her granddaughter either. 

Shae. Poor Shae. Poor Shae and poor me and poor father and poor Arya and poor Lady… Lady. She hadn’t even counternaunced the existence of her former direwolf since the Inn at the Crossroads. 

Now all of a sudden her dead wolf pushed her family and handmaiden from her mind. Beads of sweat started forming in her hair by her temples. Rolling in rivulets down her spine and thighs making her uncomfortable. 

She was too hot by far. Hotter than she had ever been, discomfort became a new sort of pain. Sansa gripped the stone of the balcony and took several deep measured breathes.

Alright. She felt a bit better. 

Glancing up at the sky she saw the looming full moon. It had been growing all week and now was at its pinnacle. She could see the orb twice, in the sky, in the water. It screamed something unintelligible and primal to her and she wished to call back. As if all her worries would go away if she could make some connection with the celestial glow. 

The knock at the door was hammering by the time it registered in her head. 

Sansa tore herself away from the balcony. It was hard. Like breaking free of iron shackles with only force of will. 

“Sansa?!” Margaery threw herself through the door as it was opened in a swirling dart of chestnut brown hair and green clothing. She moved across the room far too fast and hugged Sansa around her shoulders. “Shit. Sorry did that hurt?”

“No,” Sansa replied slowly. Her arms were still at her sides. She did not return the hug. Despite wanting to see Margaery since Shae was taken her mind was overpowered by these peculiar, instinctive feelings and they told her be wary of this person. 

“Grandmother told me about Shae,” Margaery continued unperturbed. She released her hug but didn’t let go, Sansa wished she would as she was unable to shake a feeling of dread at the other’s girl’s contact, where a second ago she had been overheating now she was freezing. Margaery took both of Sansa’s palms against her will and held them and squeezed them. These were clearly supposed to be well-intentioned and reassuring gestures and they would have been just a day ago but in the light in the moon she thought them insincere and an act. 

“Right,” Sansa pulled back and was released thankfully. 

“Sorry I shouldn't be grabbing at you? Should I? Not after that soldier… You know,” Margaery smiled at her with a sad sympathetic smile which made Sansa recoil physically from its hollowness.

“I don’t know actually,” Sansa mumbled, as she took shuffling steps backwards away from Margaery and into the basking glow of the watery-white light. That was better. A lot better. 

“Pardon me?” Margaery hummed, trying to sound light and airy but Sansa felt the other girl was on edge underneath her calm exterior.

“I don’t know. What even happened. A man was threatening me. I remember that. Despite it being so common I still remember each time it happens,” Sansa said slowly. Only ever glancing at Margaery. She was feeling strangely confident enough to say these things and voice her concerns for the first time since her father’s imprisonment, but not confident enough to be directly confrontational. 

“Yes and he hurt you and I brought you back here and that’s that, I’m talking about Shae though. She’s the priority here,” Margaery replied. Still sweet as ever. Well it sounded as sweet as ever. Yet Sansa’s senses told her a different story. Margaery wanted to change the topic. 

“What happened to the soldier?”

“Which soldier? No nevermind that, maybe you’ve had a turn from your injury Sansa, you wanted to talk about Shae remember?” Margaery didn’t sound quite as friendly now. 

“You seem to want to, I want to talk about the soldier. You don’t seem to want to,” Sansa said finally meeting Margaery's eyes. She felt a lot better, in fact she had never felt so powerful and in charge of her own mind.

“I’m your friend here Sansa, there’s no need…” Margaery approached Sansa again and reached out to take her forearm. The touch ignited her flesh and she ripped her arm back a deep animalistic growl coming out from inside her chest. It wasn’t her, it wasn’t Sansa but it was.

Margaery tore herself away, quickly, a lot quicker than anyone should. Sansa was sure of something unnatural this time. Especially as her growl was returned as a hiss from the other girl. 

They looked at each other for a few long seconds. There was anger in Margaery’s eyes and her body was poised for an attack like a threatened animal. 

At last Lady Tyrell straightened out the creases in her dress and stood up properly, recomposed as a Lady ought to be. 

“Lady Stark,” she muttered keeping her lips tight. 

“Lady Tyrell.”

She left Sansa in peace. When the door was gone and Sansa felt like the other girl was definitely gone she leaned backwards against the balcony, exhausted and panting.

What in the seven hells just happened?!

Don’t worry about it now, a small voice inside her head told her, just bask in moonlight. 

* * *

Robb was no longer acting like himself. He was no longer acting like anyone. He was acting like a surge of energy. Edmure Tully might have ruined his plans but Robb wasn’t planning on that turning the tide of the war. 

His men broke breakneck speed South towards Casterly Rock. Passing it in the distance. Lannisport too. Turning East into the mainland Robb and his party avoided all the major castles and strongholds. 

It would have taken days to reach his destination with an army but where he was headed didn’t have enough men to warrant an army. 

Besides Robb didn’t want too many witnesses for what he was determined to do.

On the ride he had debated his actions but no reasons came up. He only got more single and bloody minded as the sun fell and the moon rose. 

Dusk was setting in as they arrived.

200 men would be plenty. 

They left their horses and sneaked to their destination. No talked on the ride. When he was able to tear his mind away from the task at hand he noticed his troops were a little scared of him. After the unexplained bloodbath at the Banefort and his display of strength with a Frey and now a risky, impulse mission he could understand. 

Could but didn’t care to.

“They’ll be able to see us soon,” Robb muttered to the men around him. “When they do I want you to charge after me. Get the grappling hooks up immediately. Climb and kill.”

“Climb and kill.”

“Climb and kill.”

This was repeated several times as the order spread through his men. 

Right, Robb spoke to himself, right its time to do it. Time to spill blood. He had never thought of war in those terms before, it was a necessity, not a pleasure, but this thought, tonight, Robb did not have. He was too consumed by thoughts of death and blood and… 

He drew his sword and started to jog up towards his target. This small stronghold.

“INTRUDERS!” 

They all heard it and Robb didn’t need to command his side to run, they just did. As the first couple arrows came hissing out of the pale darkness of the dying dusk and encroaching night. 

A few screams or grunts came as some of his men fell but their surprise, out of the blue, charge meant the grappling hooks were being thrown up before the defenders were able to give them a proper volley. 

Robb shoved the man next to him, knocking the man over and away from the rope he was holding. He would be the first up. He needed...

The rope strained under his grip and Robb planted his feet on the wooden wall and hauled his dead weight up. His muscles were strong and his body hard from years of training and then the war itself. Tonight was different. The outside yet conversely internal strength he had been feeling as of late took over. His body was animated by the darkness of the world and the paling light from the night sky. 

His sword was parallel to the wall, pointing downwards as he climbed. 

Poking his head over the parapet Robb was already sweeping his blade from vertical to horizontal using the flat of the blade to strike out. The man waiting for him wasn’t expecting this move and the edge sliced his torso. Tearing the three dogs emblazoned on his surcoat in half.

Robb wedged the sword into the man and with two free hands leaped over the spiked wooden posts of the wall. Tearing his dagger from his side he threw himself like an uncaged beast at the next defender. Tackling them to the floor and slashing wildly at their face and neck. 

“Fucker!” Robb swore as he pushed himself up and retrieved his sword from the corpse. Looking left and right he saw his men were taking the walls. Not as easily as he would have liked. These men were the personal guard of Ser Gregor Clegane. They were going to brutal killers each one. 

His men would take the walls. He would push on. He needed...

Robb, unthinkingly, jumped from the top of the wooden walls down into the courtyard. It should have broken his legs to hop down twenty-five feet but he landed gracefully and in one motion was striking out with snake like quickness. 

The soldiers down in the courtyard were not suspecting this. No one would have been. No one could have been and no one, realistically, should have been. It should have been an impossible move. 

He span in a 360 cutting arc. He didn’t kill a single man but injured and wounded three. Resetting his feet Robb pounced like a wolf holding his sword with both hands in front of his chest. He landed like a human spike onto top of a wounded man who screamed as he died. From the floor Robb pulled his knife out once more and scrabbling around in the dirt he stabbed and punched and stabbed again. Slashing and stabbing and punching he killed the two other wounded Clegane soldiers like an animal would kill its prey.

He was coated from the spray of blood. It was in his mouth and trickling down his throat. He needed more of it. He needed… Flesh.

Robb paused for a second. Flesh? Where did that come from…

His flash of introspection evaporated as a roar which broke the sound barrier split the air.

Ser Gregor was joining the frey. Robb saw him from down in the courtyard. The Mountain burst through a door which lead onto his battlements in full black plate swinging a claymore like a dirk. One handed and vicious. 

His men weren’t having as an easy of a time as he anticipated, they weren’t making a foothold at all. 

He didn’t have time to worry about his men he had to worry about himself as the quarter master and blacksmith and other such staff came after him armed with the intention to fight. 

Of course the Mountain’s household would all be savages… Robb would show them true savagery. 

The flash of his steel became part of him as the blacksmith with his soot covered apron swung a hammer at him. Robb dodged it easily and shoulder tackled the man backwards into one of his comrades. Not giving his foes a moment of respite he dashed away from the downed men to strike out. He caught a man armed with a giant meat cleaver under the chin and opened his throat. 

Spinning out from his kill Robb swung his sword with him along the ground and swept it upwards killing the blacksmith who had barely scrambled to his feet. 

“No! No! No! Please NO!”

The pleas of quarter fell on deaf ears as Robb plunged his sword down on the man who had been tackled behind the blacksmith. The King of Winter was still moving, catching a spear a few inches down from the tip and using the wooden shaft to pull its wielder into the death of his sword. 

Slashes and cuts and strikes and blood and blood and more blood.

Robb was fighting alone and soon he was alone again all those in the courtyard who came before him were slain. 

“YOU!”

The King in the North was, at last, able to turn his attention back to the walls. His heart fell a bit in his chest. His men hadn’t been able to take the walls. The dead were littered everywhere. 

The Clegane soldiers left were battered and few. The Stark soldiers were obliterated. The Mountain began descending the inner staircase to meet Robb.

“YOU DARE ATTACK MY KEEP!”

“I’m the King in the North and I go where I please freak!” Robb roared back. He wasn’t scared in the least. He was ready and that inner rage had taken over again and he was ready.

Ready.

“Stark?! Ha! I’ll be moving in Lannisport when I cut your FUCKING HEAD OFF!” Clegane bellowed. He and his men were down in the courtyard now and began spreading out in a crescent moon around Robb.

“I don’t want your head Clegane,” Robb sang out. He was giddy with happiness.

“Haha!” The Mountain boomed with laughter as night truly fell over the Westerlands.

“I want your FLESH!” Robb growled. 

Except it wasn’t really Robb anymore but they didn’t know that. 

They realized pretty quickly when the Winter King stripped off his clothes and tossed aside his weapon and the teenage boy was replaced with a heaving mass of fur and teeth and rage.

The handful of Clegane men saw a sight no one in Westeros had ever seen before.

They saw a terrified Gregor Clegane. Then they saw nothing. They became nothing and saw nothing ever again. 

 

* * *

“That ain’t no law,” Yoren spat, “that’s just a sword. Turns out I ‘ave one too!” The veteran ranger pulled his weapon free. He was ready to die in the face of these Lannister cunts.

Yoren pretended to be a rogue and a rascal but the influence of his adoptive father Lord Mormont had sunk in. He was willing to die for justice. Lord Stark was just and Yoren would be buried with more blades in him then Willem was before Arya Stark got raped by some Red Cloak cunt. 

“Kill him take the rest,” Ser Amory Lorch commanded in a bored, supercilious tone. 

Yoren gripped his weapon ready to fight to his last as the Lannister troops advanced on him only to pause. 

The noise they all heard was horrifying. Then the crash and smash which followed too. The barn door in which the Night’s Watch recruits had been sheltering inside of exploded.

A monstrous wolf burst forth. 

No it couldn’t be. Yoren had seen some things beyond the wall he would never tell a Southerner because they would never believe him but he had never seen anything like that.

The wolf was white and grey like the sigil of House Stark. Yet towered at nine or ten feet tall and stalked like man.

It marched slowly forward on its hind legs surveying the fight which was about to happen. 

“Fuckin’ kill it! Kill it!” Ser Amory Lorch cried, his supercilious tone replaced with a desperate and cowardly one. 

This cry for violence only spurred the wolf on as it tore forward at pace right towards Yoren.

He closed his eyes. He kept them closed as the noises he heard around him convinced him he didn’t want to see. 

“Yoren, Yoren c’mon,” Gendry was at his arm tugging him away. “We gotta go now c’mon!”

Opening his eyes he was surrounded by carnage. Fortunately carnage which was directed only at the Red Cloaks. In shock the older man allowed this bastard from King’s Landing to pull him away. 

When they were away and safe Yoren finally took control back. 

“Wait everyone here?” He garbled. 

“Yes, yes, yes, yes, come on!”

“Where’s Arya?! Shit! Arry? Where’s Arry?”

“Erm… Don’t worry about her.”

“I made a promise to myself I’d save her. Him fuck sake him. I’d save him. I respected HIS father,” Yoren explained in a messy rush.

“Well she saved us,” Gendry told him.

As if on cue a loud howl resonated through the forest paths under the full moon.


	6. Red Skies

 

His heart was beating beyond control but he pretended otherwise. Not that his reavers could see. It was the dead of night but with the full moon it might as well have been midday. However under the walls of his bounty his face was masked by shadow.

“Get those grappling hooks up!” He ordered in a hushed voice.. “Get them up, get them…” He stopped his order to retch from fear.

“Up.”

“Up.”

“Up.”

With his order completed Theon swallowed his fear and trepidation. He grasped the rope dangling from the grappling hook and he hefted himself over the walls of Winterfell. 

His men followed. Soon they were all up and the few Stark guards on duty had been taken care of. Luckily he hadn’t had to dispatch any of them. Killing men he would have known since he was a child might have broken his resolve. 

Theon lead his men down into the courtyard.

“Seize the household staff and hold them here. I’ll be back with their little lord,” Theon commanded.

He jogged off to fetch them.

The Ironborn waited within the courtyard of Winterfell for a time. They pushed and punched and pulverized some of the staff as they waited. Yet they waited nonetheless.

“The fuck that ponce gone?”

“Who knows?”

“Probably in ‘is old bed’oom sniffin’ ‘is sheets.”

The Ironborn laughed. They hated their commander and undermined him at every turn. However he was still the son of their King and brother to Asha so they never directly disobeyed him. He was taking his bloody time.

“This ain’t even fucking funny now is it? The fuck is he?”

The answer came.

The Ironborn raiders who had been entrusted to Theon were gathered in the courtyard of Winterfell and they held several dozen helpless prisoners. They waited for Theon to return with Brandon and Rickon Stark. Theon did return.

His head returned without the rest of him. Tossed by a gigantic wolf. A gigantic black wolf who paced forward on all fours and threw the severed head with a whip of his huge head. He was followed by a reddish wolf, who was even bigger, stalking on two feet like a man.

The Ironborn watched Theon Greyjoy’s head roll, all the way to its stop. It wasn’t really just a head, claws and fangs weren’t as surgical as a blade, and some of Theon’s shoulder and neck was there too. 

Then they looked back up at the wolves who were both on hind legs now and darting forward. The Greyjoy attack on Winterfell ended as soon as it begun.

* * *

Tyrion did not like his sister. She did not like him

This was the ground rule of their relationship.

Something he misliked even more were the rare occasions when events overtook them and they had to talk candidly. 

It had happened when they discussed Stannis’ imminent assault and Tyrion had to awkwardly console his sister about her relationship with Jaime. He lied to her as he lied to himself. He loved Jaime more than anyone in the entire world, more than himself, so he had always excused their relationship in his mind. He used this positive emotion towards his brother to comfort his sister. 

It had happened when she briefly returned to Casterly Rock when Robert was invading the Iron Islands. Jaime stopped back home for a moment too, only to brag about he was going to be first through the breach. Cersei got drunk and opened up to Tyrion about how she felt about the then King. How she wanted to hate Robert but when she felt nothing she forced herself to hate and chastised herself if she caught herself not hating him. Yet she didn’t want him to die because she was used to the life she had. Tyrion eased her mind by telling her that the eldest Baratheon felt the same and he wanted to continue with their distant union to keep his boorish lifestyle at Tywin’s expense. 

It had happened when Jaime was sent off to the Kingsguard and Rhaegar was promised to another. Tyrion was just a child but he listened to her as she wept and he consoled her by pretending she was Jaime and he said all the things he felt about his brother leaving when he wanted him to stay. 

Tyrion knew this would never happen in reverse. That his sister would revel in his misery. Yet he was unable to respond to sincere sadness with anything but compassion. A weakness in a Lannister.

Now it was about to happen again. 

This prisoner who their father was convinced had some arcane knowledge was being kept in a modest room converted to a cell. While Lord Tywin and Ser Kevan spoke with her, Cersei and Tyrion were bid to wait in the small council chambers for their father and Uncle to return. 

“Are you going to fight me and snipe at father when they return?” Cersei broke the long silence. 

“I might,” Tyrion drawled. “It depends on what is said. I only mock things if they deserve to be mocked. People just say a lot of stupid things.”

“Humph.”

“Are you taking this seriously? You weren’t remotely interested in going to the Wall back way when in the North and now you’re a true believer,” Tyrion jeered her.

“I’m not a true believer!” She paused her pacing to snap at him and scowl before resuming it. Pacing made everyone tense and Cersei did it regularly. “I’m just smart enough to be open to possibilities outside of our realm of knowledge.” That was not a phrase his sister would come up with. Father clearly got to her Tyrion decided. “Not being open to it is actual ignorance.” A hundred percent father’s words. 

“As am I, I accept magic existed and I’m sure there are some tricksters scattered over the world. Mostly Qarth not King’s Landing but still…” Tyrion mused slowly. He purposefully took a slower and more measured tone and sat lazily when Cersei was moving and uptight to irate her. “Trant acting out is no proof. Acolytes preaching in the streets is no proof, the opposite if anything… You can’t believe such nonsense.”

“No. I don’t necessarily believe such nonsense. What if these are faceless assassin’s magic tricks? Or Warlocks bought and paid by an unknown enemy disrupting our court during a time of war,” Cersei rattled off. Again these were their father’s words. 

“Trant is a fat, mean, idiot maybe he developed some psychosis from having to fight in a proper battle,” Tyrion reasoned. “Men go mad after seeing horrors. Lesser men.”

“Then why does his so called psychosis only appear when confronted by the formidable Sansa Stark? Father made him execute a few prisoners and he did that fine,” Cersei stopped pacing and shot him a smug look.

Whelp she’s got me there Tyrion thought as he rolled his eyes and glanced around for wine.

“I hear this prisoner they’re interrogating is a pretty dumb little foreign thing,” Cersei snarked, “maybe that would pique your interest… If there are tits involved.”

Foreign thing? Oh no there was no way. How many foreign beauties were there in the Capitol. Though with his luck, and unfortunate knack for being in the center of things he’d rather not be involved in at all, he sensed the worse.

* * *

I needed to be out of the city. Needed the dark and calming embrace of the blanket of night. I left the clothes of Margaery Tyrell behind and dressed hooded and cloaked. 

That interaction with Sansa had thrown me for a loop.

I tried to care but she… I sensed something different about her. It waned and waxed as she moved around her room. I just pretended I didn’t notice it but she acted differently. 

Then that growl. It wasn’t Sansa but it forced my body to leave me. For the beast inside to take over momentarily. That wasn’t me that sped away and poised my body ready for an attack, that wasn’t me that hissed. I was just a spectator for the beast inside which I had believed I was in control of. 

I fled Sansa’s chambers unable to get my fangs to retract back into my gums. Unable to return to normal I fled to my chambers and left the Red Keep. Leaps and bounds took me past the Kingswood. Out into open country. The distance I covered in a few minutes would have taken a company of riders all morning and the better part of the afternoon. 

The uneasy feeling still wouldn’t go away. 

What was wrong with Sansa Stark? Her heart was beating faster than I’d ever heard a heart beat. Her body was so hot she ought to have been dying of a fever. Then the animalistic noise…

Was she different the way I’m different? Or different in a different way but still different? 

If that was the case then…

What was that?

I breathed deep. I smelled blood. Human. Fresh.

My mind was taken over again. Not me acting through me. This had happened a few times when this first happened to me. Thought I had it under control.

The bronze, metallic taste of my own blood filled my mouth. My fangs had stabbed holes in my bottom lip and my blood gushed forth for a moment before my body knitted itself back together. Having to skid my breakneck speed to a halt I doubled over and wretched and wretched until I vomited; a thick treacle . T'was a mystery to me that I needed blood but my own was a poison.

Right that's better.

Few deep breaths... (even though unnecessary).

Once more my mind jerked and changed, it was jarring to be me, and the beautiful bouquet of fresh and varied blood filled my palate. Ahhh. Sweetness itself.

The scene I was in was anything but sweet.

A massacre. 

The broken Lannister men looked like a giant had torn them to pieces as if they were toy soldiers.

"what the hell happened here?" I spoke out loud to myself. "No normal person could do this."

Turning over a body of the man with the fanciest armour on my stomach twisted in disgust. Imagine someone took four spear tips at once and simultaneously raked them through the metal, leather, flesh, bone and organs. From the right clavicle to left hip. Then had took a halfway decent go at scooping what was once covered onto the grass. 

Only someone like me could manage to do this... But everyone still had their blood. Well... Apart from all the spilled and splattered blood... No one had tried to consume it was the point... 

There were a couple horses and a cart tied up by a barn not fifty yards from the worst of the slaughter. So it couldn't have been some large pack of wild beasts, they would have attacked everything that breathed. Then feasted. This was abnormal.

Maybe I shouldn't be here. 

No. 

I shouldn't. My mind started working sensibly again. The primal urges were finally dying down in the face of reason. Reason or fear. 

Retreating from the scene I fumbled and realised it was much harder to find my way back to King's Landing, having been driven through instinct, I was lost. 

Shit.

The sun would be coming up soonish and I was unable to truly use my heightened abilities under the disorientating brightness. 

Shit.

Moving off East I spent the journey not concentrating on where I was going like a moron. Instead the mystery and horror of the scene I was drawn to took all my attention. The only thing that sense that someone like me did it and didn't take any blood so they wouldn't arouse suspicion, or drank spilled blood. It wasn't a perfect idea and seemed forced together but nothing else came to mind. 

Shit.

Duskendale appeared on my horizon, I could see it several miles away. There was no way I could reach the Capitol in time. If I couldn't get there by dawn I wouldn't have the strength to jump or climb or run back to my quarters without arousing suspicion. 

The only option would be to wait. Luckily the war had pushed many of those who lived in open country into the cities for safety, leaving many abandoned houses and barns. It didn't take long to find one.

 

Slumping down in a corner i dirtied my clothing with hay and straw and other such things which were best not thought about.

Well, that was an outstanding success wasn't it?

I swear I was just trying to console Sansa Stark a couple hours ago.

* * *

“Fuck me,” Robb grumbled. His body felt like he was burning alive. Like a vile hangover. His face was cool, that was nice, in something nice and cold and pleasant. He kept his eyes sealed tight, not ready to open them and see what had happened. He couldn’t get enough air from his nose and tried his mouth, but choked as he inhaled gravel. “Fuck me!” he repeated louder this time, rolling onto his back. He felt his whole body, he was naked. 

Great.

Peeking through one eye Robb discovered the cool sensation was mud. He had been rutting around in mud like a drunken slob who had failed to make it home before passing out. 

Standing up, his head spun and lurched back and forth. Gods. 

A few moments, minutes, maybe half an hour passed as he stood taking deep breaths and spitting out any salvia that came to his mouth. Still refusing to check where he was and what had happened. No one seemed to be killing him or trying to talk so he paid no mind to anything but his own personal hell.

“Fuck!” He swore one more time. 

Properly steeling himself and looking around, he fell backwards and scrabbled in the dirt as all his memories came rushing back. The failure of Edmure Tully, the Stone Mill, the impulsive ride to the Clegane’s Keep, the battle, the loss of all his men and then…

He held his head, his hands tearing at his hair as he remembered what he done. 

What he had become. 

Robb looked down at his own hands tilting them around and making sure no fur, talons or claws were there. They definitely were last night. Inspecting the carcasses of Clegane men he saw and remembered the damage he had inflicted with claws and teeth. Touching his lips Robb was able to crack of dried blood like so many paint chips. 

“The hell…” Robb spluttered. His headache and sickness went as his brain attempted to process the impossible to process. 

“Are you a monster?” 

“Fuck!” Robb swore for the umpteenth time as the surprise voice startled him. He looked for a sword and found many. Though he didn’t feel much safer holding a blade when stark naked. His eyes darted around for the voice. 

A young boy, weak, malnourished and filthy wearing the rags of peasant stood in a doorway to the Clegane Keep’s bailey. 

“Are you a monster?” The boy asked again.

“No,” Robb calmed down seeing there was no threat to him. He searched for clothes and stripped a dead man of his trousers and shirt. There were too big but better than nudity. 

“I saw a monster fall down there,” the boy pointed to the very Robb shaped disturbance in the mud, “and you woke up there…”

“Best to forget what you saw.”

“I’ll never forget what I saw,” he replied stoney faced. Robb sighed and ran his hand over his face and through his hair in an exhausted frustration. “You killed another monster.”

“What do you mean?”

The boy rushed out from his safe spot in a doorway out into the carnage. He stood by a body. Well what was left. The gigantic corpse of Ser Gregor Clegane was hewn in bits. Huge claws had taken an arm and most of a shoulder, another swipe had taken half a leg and his guts were poured out and thrown left and right. 

No matter how brutal a man the Mountain-that-rides was he never had committed such brutal acts as his own demise. 

“Look away,” Robb commanded of the boy. Who refused. He sighed. Taking up his stolen blade he hacked the colossal head off. A rare instance were decapitation did not mutilate the corpse more than it already was. “Look, I can’t take you with me.”

“I live here,” the boy replied. “It’s my castle now.”

Robb laughed despite himself. Before he could open his mouth to tell the lad that it was too dangerous and to flee with any wealth he could thieve, the child had scampered off back into the castle. 

He had to leave. He had to go. 

The bodies of his men were everywhere, it was easy to piece together the battle in the cold light of dawn. Where his men took the walls and where the counterattack annihilated them. The Mountain’s men were savages. Were. Now they were just savaged.

Strapping the head to the side of his mount Robb rode away. North up the coast towards the Banefort and security. Leaving behind 199 spare horses who's riders no longer needed them. 

He focused his mind to be as absent and blank as possible, wishing to bury and ignore the atrocious and impossible memory of what he did. What he was.

However just as it was impossible to believe, it was impossible to suppress and all the horrors of what Robb was tortured and plagued him as he rode.

* * *

She couldn’t stop herself giggling with unmitigated joy. A joy she had thought was extinguished with the beheading of her father at the Sept of Baelor. 

Arya knew herself to be weak, physically, even compared to other little girls. Yet last night when the Lannisters attacked the Night’s Watch, in a display fitting of their unbelievable disregard for all that was decent. She felt the coursing power which had been bubbling under the surface of her skin since the last full moon erupt forth and concentrated in violent rage against her enemies.

Arya felt her skin pull off and thick fur sprouting underneath. She felt her frame grow and transform as she embraced the terror she became. Arya grew and became the manifestation of her desires. Something to be feared and full of otherworldly power. A trembling mass of ferocity. Her bloodthirst was sated immediately as all Red Cloaked bastards fell like wheat under a scythe. Those who had made her scared. Made her weak and a victim against their power were victimised in short order. 

The laughter burst from her chest again. So pleased was she at what had happened. 

Hopefully she would not have to wait under the next full moon. Yet if she did, she would wait then she, like a tight coil, would spring forth onto anyone from the Westerlands. More giggling. 

She would not let that suffice she would channel and control it. Learn to become it. Then Cersei. The Hound. Ser Meryn Trant. Joffrey. Ser Ilyn Payne. More ecstatic laughter at what she had in store for those on her list. 

Finding a barn for cover and to sleep, Arya was almost skipping with delight as she found an abandoned abode. The farmers presumably long gone. Another nameless, faceless man who had his and his families’ lives unreservedly ruined by the Lannisters of Casterly Rock. They may not be able to reap their vengeance but Arya would for them. For many more. For her family. 

For herself.

“Who are you?” Arya asked to what appeared to an empty barn, but still with heightened sense she could smell perfume. She could hear a small adjustment of a hidden person, shifting in their covert spot. “I know you’re there!” She called out, brazenly and confident. The lady who emerged from behind a haystack was unexpected. A beautiful lady, certainly highborn glided forward. 

“Who are you?” She asked back in an accent which confirmed her nobility. 

“I asked first!” Arya said a little more petulantly that she had intended, showing her age. The woman moved with an unnatural grace. She was tanned but weirdly also very pale. Her eyes didn’t look human. 

“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

“Same.”

“Ha! Are you a highborn too? You sound like it?”

“Maybe.”

“Arya Stark?!”

“The hell? I mean no,” Arya covered herself badly, obviously giving herself away. “Who the hell are you?” 

“Are you Arya Stark?”

“Answer me!”

“I suppose there can’t be much harm in telling you,” the lady mused for a moment. “Margaery Tyrell.”

“Fuck off.”

“I can’t. Not til dark.”

“Are you like me?” Arya asked quickly. 

“Maybe… Depends what you are.”


	7. Growing Pile of Bones

-7-

Tyrion beat his fists on the wall, beat them over and over, blood trickled from one knuckle and he had to stop. As much as he wished he could be passionate like Jaime would be, and ignore the pain, he could not. Despite his heart screaming with agony and his head folding in on itself. 

“Something wrong my lord?” Sansa Stark’s tall, willowy frame stood next to him. Poor girl. If she had survived what she had endured and done so in hostile territory he ought to be able to pull himself together 

“Nothing you need worry about,” Tyrion composed himself, hiding his bloodied hand behind his back. 

“Right… Well I was wondering if you have seen my handmaiden. Shae is her name. She was arrested by Lannister men and I wouldn’t normally ask but you’re not…” 

Tyrion zoned her out as internally chastised himself for being so emotional he forgot that Shae was also connected to Sansa Stark. Gods. Another tragedy for the young lady. 

“She was arrested and de…” Tyrion paused on lying and saying she had been sent far away. That might have tricked the naive Stark girl he first met up at Winterfell but unlikely to work on her now. As stupid as everyone in his family and their court thought Sansa might be, Tyrion sensed she was deeper than she let on. “I’m afraid she was executed.” He held his voice firm, and pushed down the emotion. 

Sansa didn't wail, or fall back with horror as he had imagined. She nodded grimly.

“Thank you informing me my Lord,” Sansa inclined her head marginally and turned to leave. 

That sort of grit and inner steel was a quality he ought to have himself, as he slunk back into his chambers and began to stupify himself with wine. 

Shae tied up to a bed. The fact it was in a bedchamber and not a dingy cell somehow made it all the more sinister. Shae’s arm were cut to strips, like sliced ham all folded on top of each other at a lunch. Her face battered and bruised and many teeth missing. The blood filling the linen sheets. Much like his mother’s must have looked like after he was born. That solemn thought made me have to cry out to purge that horrid image from inside the centre of his brain. 

Tyrion threw his cup hard at the wall, an arc of wine spilling over the floor and the goblet clanged off. He could cry but he certainly would not... Tywin.

Tywin bloody Lannister.

His loving father.

Who had treated him with contempt and coldness his entire life now stole the woman he loved from him. 

Tyrion saved this bloody city from Stannis. He did. He was treated like shit for doing so. Caught up in petty politics which stole any glory from him, stole any recognition for his service. At least he did have Shae to soothe those bitter feelings and wounds to his pride. Tywin now had stolen the last piece of his life that was worth living… 

“Fuck House Lannister!” Tyrion growled to himself as he pulled a banner of the prancing lion from the wall. He took any lion emblazoned cup, cushion, sheet, banner, jewellery and threw them into a trunk. Tearing open his door he waved over a Gold Cloak; who he knew was positively deposed to him. Some of the men at least recognised what he had done for them, though only when they checked over their shoulder to make sure no witnesses would hear actual honesty in the Red Keep. “Can you take this trunk and have it taken to the furnace.”

“Furnace my lord?” 

“We don’t have a… Have it burned,” Tyrion ordered. Taking a handful of coins which meant naught to him but a lot to a soldier, he forced it into the man’s hand. 

“Of course my Lord.”

Magic. Magic had killed the woman he loved. No it hadn’t, it was a false hood. Paranoia developed from a weak hold on power had killed her. Well that and Tywin. He didn’t know what, but he would do something. He would get some revenge.

* * *

“Are we there yet.”

“Are we there yet.”

“Are we there yet.”

Brienne wanted to kill the Kingslayer. She wanted to when she first met him but now it was worse than ever. She just gritted her teeth and walked forward. She knew he wouldn’t run off. He was shackled and weak and they both knew there was something monstrous in the woods. 

“Are we there yet,” Jaime asked again. Brienne turned and pushed him over, but failed as he held onto the edges of her armour and brought them both down. “We have to stop meeting like this.”

There was a pause, as Brienne and Jaime’s faces came close and she looked at his face for a couple beats longer than she ought to before shoving him away and bringing herself to her feet.

“You must insufferable when you’re in your element.”

“How so?” Jaime asked holding out his hand as if she would help him up. Raising his eyebrows expectantly. When she didn’t, he smirked and rolled his eyes lifting himself up dramatically with a lot of overplayed exertions. 

“If you’re like this now what must you be like at full strength surrounded by sycophants, surrounded by people kissing your arse?!”

“Uncomfortable,” he replied candidly. 

Huh. She hadn’t expected that. It disarmed her. Jaime Lannister was certainly not what she had expected him to be… Unless this was some manipulation. The Lannister were known for their political maneuvering and getting others to unwittingly do their will. That and their brutality. 

“Brienne,” Jaime mumbled but she didn’t hear him. “Brienne,” he hissed louded through gritted teeth.

It was too late. The overgrowth was disturbed and men were upon them. Weapons drawn. Brienne reacted just in time, to tear her sword free and shove Jaime to fall again, this time alone. 

“Well, well, well, look what we got ‘ere lads,” a hairy brute with no nose chuckled as he prowled around them. “Jaime fuckin’ Lannister, ‘n’ a ‘ittle bit o’ cunny too boot!” He growled at Brienne. “Biter seize ‘er.”

Another horror of a man whose teeth were filed to points stopped circling to advance on her. 

The worst of the three was a jester, in tattered green, with the three bells on the hood who danced on the spot like a lunatic, jingling away. He was slowly twirling a flail. “Is it rape if she’s a whore in the first place? Or just thievin’?” The creep stared at them for a moment. “LAFF! Wait, wait, wait, until they FUCKIN’ LAFF!”

“We don’t have time we…”

While the two none mutes argued Brienne darted forward in a move that impressived Jaime far more than he would ever admit and stabbed ‘Biter,’ in the neck and had her sword withdrawn and her stance reset all in the same movement. 

“FUCK ME! Get her! GET HER!” 

They both attacked and Brienne desperately blocked the incoming sword from the leader and had to take the flail on the side of her armour. She cried in pain, sounding distinctively female for the first time Jaime had heard.

He tried to get himself up with shackled hands. Should he help? He misliked the woman and these men would probably kill him. However if he waited she might be able to defeat them but get injured badly enough for him to capitalise. While parrying another strike, Brienne’s sword was rasping against the big hairy one’s letting the jester’s flail take out her the knee. Where she wasn’t armoured. Falling to her knee, her dagger was already out in another impressive move; she severed the leader’s hamstring and stabbed his other leg and groin and gut multiple times before the flail span back around and took her down.

Goddammit Jaime thought. He couldn’t let this happen. 

Jaime dove at the jester who was prancing back and forth as the bells on his hood eerily jingled. The tackle took them both down, and just as he killed his cousin Alton, he raised and brought the shackles down over and over. He mangled and bloodied what was exposed of the jester’s face until he heard a crack and felt a spasm of death.

Jaime took a breath. He was in poor shape. Captivity and shit food and having to bloody hike everywhere like a goddamn infantryman had weakened him. Weakened him enough to be seized from behind and dragged backwards by a wounded by still dangerous man. Jaime raised his shackles in a pathetic defensive pose as the smelly, hairy brute struggled in the limited space to get his sword point to his throat.

The strike never came as steel and blood burst forth as Brienne plunged her sword through their assailants skull, right through and out of where his nose ought to have been.

Brienne and Jaime shared a look before both falling back onto the floor and panting heavily. 

“Are... we... there... yet?”

“Close.”

“Oh good.”

* * *

His men celebrated the death of Ser Gregor Clegane. His head was mounted on a spike, the plan was to carry it with them from camp to camp. Lord Bolton wished his infantry to use it as a standard to instill fear into any Lannister infantry. It was the sort of thing that Robb would normally have banned and been disgusted by. However now. Now he was different minded and agreed.

Robb sensed the fear of his men. They were unsettled around him. They didn’t know why. He definitely did. He was something beyond human. Death incarnate. 

No one asked him what had happened to the other 199 men who rode breakneck speed South with him. They were too afeared. 

Back in the study of Quenten Banefort Robb remembered the destruction he had caused in an animalistic rage. He had to fetch a fresh chair and ordered a man to bring several rare cuts of beef. 

Greywind nuzzled up to him as he ate basically raw beef. The wolf looked at him with deep understanding eyes. Robb placed and pieced together what had happened to him. When he had to crawl naked under his tent he must have become the beast he was at the Clegane Keep. Just unknowingly. It was unknowingly last night, he could just remember it now in the disinfecting light of the day. 

Finishing his steaks Robb stood and focused all his mind on the emotions and rage he felt before becoming the horror he had become. Remembering what slivers he could and recreating it.

He screamed inside his head, the scream becoming a wail becoming a warcry of uncensored and unrestrained fury. He strained so hard he began to tremble and shake. 

Greywind whined almost sarcastically tilted his head, observing his master.

“Don’t judge me,” Robb grumbled, stopping his exertions. “I know, I know I look like I’m forcing out a troublesome shit…” Greywind just tilted his head the other way. “It’s easy for you, you’re already a wolf.”

Had he gone insane? As his direwolf barked out at him Robb was all but giving up on this effort. 

“One more go.”

His wolf did a wolf shrug and went to sleep in the corner, keeping his eyes barely open to watch Robb with bemusement. 

He strained and shook again, he was about to give up when the memory of his father’s execution flashed through his mind’s eye, followed up by his missing sisters, missing home, his mother’s betrayal. 

“Argh!” Robb grunted, as his hands started burning, really burning, agony was too weak a word. To his absolute dread skin was falling off like melting wax. From his knuckles first then his fingers. Bone was revealed. Like a skeleton. Expect growing larger. Before he could take in the sight of bone dark, angry hair, spurted forth, growing thick and black. 

His surprise came at not being surprised. It felt right for this to happen.

The surprise came when there was a knock at door. His heart exploded with panic. 

“A minute! One minute!”

“Yes your grace.”

He spoke as if he were a child who had been caught red-handed by his mother doing something naughty. Not as a King. Placing a hand behind his back and the other on the door handle he pulled it open a crack, well he meant to but instead took off the handle and splintered the wood a bit. 

“Yes?”

“Your generals request a council your grace,” a man-at-arms told him, bowed and left. The man was uncomfortable around Robb. It was plain to read his body language. Yet beyond that Robb could hear his heartbeat, he could place it and read it, just as he could hear men talking down the corridor and even those training in the yard.

He planned to very carefully close the door but his hands had returned to normal during the conversation. 

“Probably for the best,” he spoke to himself, “come on Greywind, let’s try to seem natural.”

The eyes which met him in the rather modest feasting hall all were different. Lord Bolton’s eyes were impassive as usual but his stance was more tense than he had seen yet. Lord greatjon Umber looked concerned. Lord Karstark was openly smiling, looking very pleased. While Black Walder and his fat father Ser Ryman looked scared, recoiling back in their seats, trying to be as far from him as possible.

“My lords,” Robb said tentatively as he took a seat at the head of the feasting tables. Greywind stood to attention by his side. ‘Your grace,’ was echoed several times. “There was something you wished to discuss?”

The silence and pause was awkwardly long. 

“Our battleplans your grace,” Lord Bolton spoke up in his soft, distinct voice which Robb once found unsettling but now held no power over him. The secret room in Dreadfort was little compared to what he now knew himself capable of. 

“Yes of course,” Robb nodded. That was obvious and far more likely than his worry he was amount to be asked if he was some devil from a long lost age. “Clegane is dead and the Lannister forces in the West will think us by Lannisport. That’s enough to lure Tywin from babysitting in the Capitol. So we move East. Quickly and discreetly to attack Duskendale.”

“That’s a long march,” Black Walder complained.

“A siege of Casterly Rock would take longer,” Robb shot back.

“Harrenhal is in the way,” Bolton interjected.

“Yes you will lead a second host, of our slower moving men, you’ll stop at Harrenhal and take it yourself.”

“That would be a hard fight.”

“Maybe not, scouts report the Lannister garrison mostly went to repel Stannis and sellswords make up the majority of the garrison,” Ryman said shyly, unable to look up from the floor and meet anyone’s eye. “Sellswords don’t just fight for money. They fight for the winning side. Which currently is us.”

Robb didn’t like that currently. 

“Sellswords?!” Lord Umber spluttered. “The Brave Companions. Are you bloody spare? They’re criminals, they’re rapists and murderers. Cruel, godless men who have earnt the headsman's axe not coin.”

“Better cruel godless men fight and die then, then my Northern host,” Roose retorted emotionlessly.

“Tis true,” Black Walder agreed. 

“Killing Lannisters is the task at hand Jon, not proving moral character,” Lord Karstark said determinedly. “Kill them all!” Robb clamped his teeth together; trying very hard to keep in the animal stirring inside him such hatred brought forth. 

“Pay the sellswords, have them war it out and then kill them and take the money back,” Black Walder suggested.

“Bollocks!” Greatjon smashed his fist into the table, making it rock and creak. 

“That would be imprudent,” Roose agreed with Umber. “Sellswords change sides, it is a part of war. Having the reputation for not honouring contracts would be more damaging to us than the benefit of having the coin, which we can just take from here.”

“I agree,” Robb couldn’t be here much longer. Where the notion of allying himself with scum like the Brave Companions would have disgusted him a month ago, it would be hypocritical for the King in the North to be disgusted by monsters. “We leave in three days. Prepare the men.”

* * *

“Maybe… Depends what you are,” I said, being reserved, though truly I had already let on more than I should have. My grandmother would have been disappointed by my lack of coyness. 

“I don’t know.”

“What’s…” I probably should be more forward considering I was the future Queen of the Seven Kingdoms talking to the supposed-to-be dead daughter of an executed traitor and sister to another. The peculiarity of the situation alone surely called for forwardness. “Do you think of blood?” I asked. 

“Lannister blood.”

That didn’t help. The smell of Arya Stark was unsettling, I had smelled a faint trace of a similar aroma on Sansa, last night before I idiotically left the Capitol. Her eyes were slightly unhinged and her stance was of someone far, far stronger than she looked but radiated the confidence that she had that strength.

“Was that you?!” I put two and two together.

“Was what me?” Arya was equally guarded and uncertain. This would be an arduous conversation. 

“The massacre I saw at that barn.”

“Yes,” she replied flatly. “That was me.”

“Oh,” I hadn’t expected that. “You didn’t have any blood?”

“Why would I. I wanted to spill it… Do you mean to eat it… Drink it I mean?”

“Just wondering,” I pondered slowly. So she wasn’t me. I remember the first time I fed, it was bloody and violent and I couldn’t stop myself, I was too overcome by my condition. This was an unpleasant revelation, it opened up a new world of arcane things up. What the hell else was out there?

“Do you? Do you need blood?” Arya asked me while fixing me with unnerving eye contact. 

“We’re talking about the barn.”

“Urggh,” Arya groaned and turned away relieving me of the stare. “I hate that political talk of the South. You ask a direct question and get no answer. What do we need to talk about? I said that what you saw was me. If you saw it then you know all you need to know.”

“Hardly. How did you do it?”

“With my hands and teeth. How would you have done it?” Arya reconnected our eyes.

“I wouldn’t,” I turned my nose up. “They were just soldiers. Even if you hate the Lannisters it was…”

“They weren’t just soldiers, they were attacking recruits and men of the Watch,” she angrily, passionately interrupted me. That was a low thing to do, illegal and unprecedented; I guessed they did deserve it. “A pretty lady like you from the softest Kingdom ought to have clasped your pearls and fainted.”

“A lady like me ought not to be out in the wilderness.” I wanted to argue the ‘softest Kingdom,’ jibe but it might actual be fair comment. 

“True… What are you?” Arya asked clearly tired of dancing around an issue.

“I don't know. I don’t have a word. Are the Riverlands considered tough… Nevermind. I don’t have a word.”

“Neither do I,” she sighed. Before sitting cross legged on the hay and dirt covered floor, unphased by the muck. Sansa was speaking true when she told me Arya was different from any highborn girl in Westeros. “I was travelling with the Watch up North, at least to Robb, but the Lannisters were hunting us, wanting to murder a bastard of Robert Baratheon…”

“The Gold Cloaks purged all of them from King’s Landing,” I mumbled as I suspiciously eyed the dirty floor but ultimately decided I should sit. “On the Lannister’s orders.”

“Your allies,” Arya spat back. “Your family is sending men to kill my brother.”

“It’s war.”

“What does that even mean? Stating a fact as if it has clever implications is Southern bullshit. It’s war, right, it is, doesn’t stop right being right and wrong being wrong.”

“I don’t make the decisions,” I shifted my defense. Uncomfortable with her open hostility. I’ve never really experienced it, everyone I’ve grown up with either spoke politely or with a degree of reverence. 

“Cersei is a cunt,” Arya said definitively, shocking me a bit with her roughness. “Reckless and cruel.”

“What you did you could be seen as reckless, though to be fair I was raised to be poised and to act smart and I’ve been extremely reckless.”

“Such as?”

“I killed a Lannister soldier in the Red Keep,” I confessed.

“Why?”

“He was threatening your sister.”

“Why?”

“He thought Sansa killed had his brother killed.”

“Who did?”

“Me.”

“You had him killed or killed him?”

“Killed him,” I confessed again to murder. “My third kill. The first was an accident. I couldn’t stop myself… The second was a priest, a preacher, some madman stirring up hate against demons…”

“That’s reckless.”

“It is. Stupid, nothing spreads rumours quicker than killing conspiracy theorists, I just get angry or full… Something inside me steers me. It feels like me but is it really?” I asked her. Those were thoughts that had been bubbling under the surface for a long time for me. 

“Yes.”

That suredness was too strong to disagree with. There would be no point. 

“Just tell me what you are,” I asked after a few awkward minutes of silence. Arya smiled, laughed and shook her head. “Fine. Just promise me you’ll get yourself quickly and quietly to Riverrun… For your sister’s sake.”

“I don’t owe you anything why should I promise a thing?! I’m not as trusting as my stupid sister.”

“Be careful.”

She reached over to pick up a long strip of metal and bent the iron with her bare hands, smirking cockily as she tossed it to me to prove her strength. “I don’t think I need to be.”

Standing up I held the cold iron between each hand and snapped it in half and tossed the two pieces back to her. “You never know you might.”

“What the hell are you?” Arya demanded.

“We don’t have trust enough for that, that’s your choice, I’m going to sleep, I can’t bear being awake in this heat anymore.”

“You trust me to fall asleep in my presence?”

Just shrugged in reply. 

“Do as you wish. Don’t tell my sister you saw me,” Arya added a little sheepishly. “She’ll just worry.”

Opening my eyes again it was dark now. I slept like an actual dead body. Loras told me I look like a corpse when I slumber. Best that I can’t see it. Standing up and brushing off all the hay and grit I looked around for Arya. She wasn’t there. The giant hole in the door of the barn which looked like a huge person had just run through was all that was left of her.

Gods. 

Time to get back to King’s Landing, just had to hope my family had covered for my absence and had to hope that nothing of importance had gone down.

* * *

Sansa stood on the balcony. Enjoying night’s fall. It was the only thing that brought her solace. To stand under the dark sky and under the tantisilsing power of the waning full moon. She felt stronger, confident and protected in the silver glow. Like a pleasant shower it cleansed and bathed her. Washing away the nastiness of her life. Her bones felt looser. Her skin less tight. Just serene. 

“GET OUTTA ‘ERE!” 

A loud booming, unfortunately familiar voice, came from the corridor outside her room. Ser Meryn Trant. The oafish bully stormed in, in his full armour, but his helm was askew, and he looked drunk as drunk could be. As if to emphasis the point to her he swigged from an almost empty flask, drained it, then throw it away. 

“YOU FUCKIN’ BITCH!” He boomed. “YOU, YOU, YOU, RUINED ME, FUCKIN’ RUINED ME!” He slurred and staggered. Like a bull, he knocked everything placed on a table off and stools down. 

“Ser!” Sansa tried but his glazed expression was impenetrable; too drunk, too angry. 

He stumbled over to her, onto the balcony, standing far too close, the smell of rum and wine was pungent. 

When Trant raised his hand to strike her, she didn’t flinch, she wasn’t scared, she wanted him to. In the moonlight she was untouchable. Predictably Trant fell to his knees, holding his head and bellowing.

“OW WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO ME?! WHAT?”

“Nothing.” Yet.

Though she shouldn’t have been able though she couldn’t physically manage it, this didn’t stop Sansa from seizing the Kingsguard under both arms and lifting his weight, which was easily twice hers and throwing him from the balcony onto the rocks and the Blackwater Rush below them.

Snarling down at the dead body one moment. Clutching her head in a sick panic the next, Sansa toppled backwards.

She had fainted and was out cold.


	8. The Witching Hour

-8-

“You can’t do that, you can’t!” Olenna was angry with me. First time in a long time. She had dismissed the staff from the gardens and put trusted men on watch to look for spies. “We raised you smart. Well I, I raised you smart. You are acting like… Well Robert would have. Following your whims and instincts. Do you want to end up like Robert?”

“Fat? I haven’t eaten food in months… And alcohol has zero effect so...”

“Don’t be snide with me. You saw how it ended for him.”

“17 years on the throne after overthrowing a dynasty?” 

“17 years of being laughed at, taken for a fool. The Baratheon’s took the throne and the Lannisters had the real power within a year. Robert didn’t think, he did as he wished and from what I hear people didn’t notice too much at first. However a missed appearance here, a spur of the moment absence there and suddenly one’s reputation is in tatters and those who play the long game circle in,” grandmother lectured me. Normally I would be polite and receptive but I had much on my mind and sleeping outside for the first time ever had left me worn out. So petulance was the way to go now.

“Are we playing the long game? As a family, allying ourselves with the losing side and sitting by amicably and nodding our heads as the Lannisters implode?” I said cuttingly but this unexpectedly made the Queen of Thorns sigh and dip her head.

“It’s worse than you think. The Tullys repelled a large raiding party by the Mountain, then the Starks took his keep in the heart of the Westerlands,” Olenna said. “Took his keep then took his head.”

“Who was able to kill the Mountain?” I asked impressed. I could easily. Who else though? Well Arya Stark but…

“Robb Stark did himself. He has it mounted on a spike and every soldier from West of the Stoney Sept is pissing themselves.”

“The Lannisters divulged this?”

“No. We found out anyway. Well I found out.”

“Nice to know.”

“So Lannisport and Casterly Rock are vulnerable.”

“No one has taken the Rock,” I replied out of conditioning more than anything. “Who is capable of it?”

“The Stark boy is, probably shouldn’t call him a boy now that he’s smashed the Lannister forces, the men who came with Tywin here are the last of the army who are worth anything,” Olenna explained. “The Stark force outnumbers them now. True the West can field more soldiers but good ones? Who’ll stand in a line against these fearsome Northerners? Especially when they’re lead by this even more fearsome King.”

“With our troops?”

“Tyrell soldiers aren’t the toughest, it isn’t our fortay, don’t shudder, it’s true, pretending we can match this Stark’s boys army would be ruinous. We would win aye, but at what cost… Besides many of our knights and retainers have a strong sense of honour and feel that honour lies with Robb Stark avenging his father not with the man who sacked King’s Landing then had babes murdered. Nor the nasty boy King who executed Ned Stark and accused HIM of treachery. Our lads hearts aren’t in this.”

“You paint a bleak picture.”

“I paint a true picture, gods, why couldn’t you have been betrothed to Robb over Joffrey?” Her grandmother sighed. “Your pigheaded father did not have the foresight to even consider that the person on the throne during a rebellion may not be the person who sits it by the end. Even better why not some nice lord from the Reach so we could stay out of this entirely. 

“Well it hasn’t happened so why think of it?” I sighed in return. From Sansa had told me about her brother he would be a far better choice than Joffrey but so would any man from Flea Bottom. 

“You’re missing what I’m saying. Tywin is leaving soon, with his army. Lord Randyll is heading up to Riverrun past Harrenhal to put pressure on the Riverlands but he won’t take the castle for an age.”

“So… If Tywin meets Robb in the field that’ll decide the throne,” I realised the point my grandmother was reaching for. 

“Precisely! The war is decided there. I have sent secret instructions to Tarly to be as peaceable and kind as possible as it to be during a war. No scorched earth, no looting nor raping, so if Tywin does lose we…”

“Have no true animus with the Starks!” That was clever I have to admit. “If we are betraying…”

“We’re not! We just look out for our own interests.”

“Well, tomato-tomato,” I disagreed, “why not have me tear Tywin’s throat out in his tent when he’s sleeping? I can be in and out in less than a second and move faster than the eye could see.”

“Because… Gods truly?” Olenna looked at me with a note of fear and a note of respect. It was very unpleasant, very upsetting to see a beloved family member to view me as the monster I tried to not be, I hadn’t truly meant it, I didn’t wish to kill if I could help it. “No, no, we shan’t do anything of the sort. Simply allow the Lion to fight the Wolf and reposition ourselves as fate decides.”

“So marry Joffrey or marry Robb. Why can’t I marry who I wish? You did?”

Olenna Tyrell opened her mouth to reply but had to close it after realising I’d stumped her, for the first time ever. Quite a few first times today. 

“The same reason you get to be a Highborn lady and some are washerwoman. Luck and chance and circumstance,” she replied. Dammit, that was good point. “Who knows if the Stark boy wins he may not like you enough or have a better offer.”

“From who?” I asked arrogantly. 

“Don’t be so cocky sweetheart from what I hear Arianne Martell is a beauty, the Snow King and Sand Queen has a poetry to it.”

“From what I hear I have my virtue whereas scores of Dornish men have had her’s.”

We both sniggered at the rudeness of what I had said, ending our conversation I had to retire to my chambers to sleep off the daytime. The attack in the Westerlands was occupying most of the Lannisters and Baratheon time, leaving my family to its own devices. 

_I couldn’t run, couldn’t do it, no matter how hard I tried. My legs were trapped in oil and I had to plough forward to escape my pursuer. I couldn’t I couldn’t do it. Helplessness over took me as I tripped over my own skirts and barely got my palms up to protect myself. My hands took the brunt hard and they broke; at the wrist bending backwards, the skin of my palms tore and cracked revealing the red tissue beneath. My blood spilled dark red coating my forearms. As I tried to move forward on my elbows I fell and slipped in my own blood. Face first I landed in the pool of my own blood, which became sticky and black like tar; drowning me. My pursuers caught me and were grasping at my body, shaking me roughly, I tried to scream but only inhaled more tar._

* * *

“Margaery! Margaery! Wake up!” Sansa shook the other girl. It was only four or five in the afternoon yet the Tyrell lady looked almost dead. She knew she had no one else to turn to. Fortunately the Tyrell guards were lax and Sansa was able to sneak into her chambers. “Come on! WAKE UP!”

Sansa screamed in horror, she was just able to clamp her hands over her mouth as she fell backwards. Margaery Tyrell, the beauty of Highgarden, the Rose of the Reach and the future Queen; hissed at her. The brunette’s eyes were completely black; iris, pupil and retina. Her canine teeth were elongated into wicked, sharp points and she moved so fast it was imperceptible to Sansa’s vision.

Margaery held Sansa’s shoulders down, pinning her to the floor where she fell, the dawn of realisation crossed Margaery’s face. 

“Gods,” Margaery disappeared again, “sorry, sorry, sorry,” she mumbled, in a panic, Sansa had to turn her head to see the other girl on the other side of the room. “Sansa! What the hell are you doing here! Why would you wake me?! I, I, I, I…”

Lady Tyrell leaned backwards against a wall and slumped down it; cradling her knees. 

“I needed help…” Sansa offered meekly. 

“You saw me. You saw me. You saw me,” Margaery rocked back and forth as she hugged her knees. “You can’t tell… I have to kill… No I can’t…”

“I murdered Meryn Trant.”

That sucked the air from the room. It reset the atmosphere in her chambers as if all the energy and talk before Sansa admitted her crime was absorbed and launched from the balcony through admittance. 

“What? When? How? What? Who? Trant?”

“I murdered him,” Sansa started to cry, hot tears of utter panic and shame rolled down her cheeks. “Last night. I picked him up and threw him from my balcony.”

“How?” Margaery looked her, still sitting with her arms wrapped around her legs. “Oh,” she nodded to herself as if remembering something which would explain what had occured. “Yes. Yes, that makes sense.”

“What does?”

“Nothing. Where is his body,” Margaery slowly and deliberately stood and righted herself. Transforming from a devil, to weak to back to normal in the space of a moment. 

“The rocks.”

“The rocks? Which rocks?”

“The ones below my balcony, on the Blackwater Rush,” Sansa told her. She was still reeling from what she saw. She can’t have seen what she saw. It was impossible. 

“You did say the balcon… Yes, fair point, well can you see him down there?”

“No…”

“Then he’ll have been eaten by crabs,” Margaery shrugged coldly. “Problem solved. Well until some gold and silver armour washes up on the shore… However by then no one will link meek Sansa Stark to a murder.”

“I suppos… What are you?” Sansa couldn’t hold in the question anymore.

“How do you mean that?”

“You know what I mean,” Sansa pushed. Gone was her shy, pathetic attitude replaced with a confidence she had not experienced since leaving Winterfell. “You can’t hide, I saw… I saw…”

“What?” Margaery snapped angrily. “What did you see? What was it a traitor’s daughter and sister observed when you broke into my chambers. I’m going to be the Queen, I could have you arrested for what you’ve done.”

“When it turns night I’ll break out!” Sansa angrily snapped back. 

“Will you now…”

The two ladies stood off; confrontationally for a few tense beats.

“Look,” Sansa’s inner desire to keep the peace kicked in. “Look, we’re both… ‘different,’ shall we say. We should stick together.”

“Why my family has power here yours doesn’t! You should be thankful for the charity of my friendship!”

“Well my family is winning the bloody war!” Sansa fired back, “when Robb gets here I can put a good word here, a bad word there. It depends doesn’t it? On who has wronged me and who has been good to me. Trust me Robb will hear and he’ll pay back any slight with steel! Whereas Joffrey is vile no matter what. He’s a piece of work… Robb will be kind where it’s due and deliver justice where it’s due,” Sansa offered an olive branch wrapped inside blackmail. 

Margaery looked furious; her eyes flashed as if they were going to turn black again but instead she found a wall to rest her back against and slumped down again.

“I should marry him then.”

That took Sansa aback.

“Sorry?”

“My grandmother mentioned… Nevermind… Fine I have your back, you have mine?” Margaery asked, Sansa nodded. “I’ll climb down the cliff edge in the night and make sure there are no remnants. The man has been falling to bits as of late and with the precedent set with Ser Barristan the King would likely have been on the way to dismissing him.”

“He was drunk,” Sansa added.

“On a scale from tipsy to rat-arsed where would he be?”

“Ummm, the second one,” Sansa still blushed at the salty language. “He was shouting and hollering and he tried to hit me but something took over me and I was able to pick him up.”

“Yes, best not to relive it in your head. That’ll make it worse. Did anyone see him come in?” Margaery asked of her.

“Yes.”

“Dammit. Who?”

“The Red Cloak who stands guard outside my room,” Sansa told her. “Trant blustered and bellowed his way down the hallway and demanded he leave. Then…” Her face went pale as once again she pictured the horrifying scene and her despicable actions. Trant may have been cruel but due to some strange trick couldn’t strike her so she murdered a defenseless person.

“Name?”

“Sorry?”

“What is the Red Cloak’s name.”

“I think the one that night,” Sansa racked her brain, pushing past the misery and self-hatred of the memory. “Denys or Desmond, a D, definitely. Oh bloody hell what was his name?! Dorren! Dorren was his name!”

“Go back to your chambers and worry not, I shall come to visit soon enough,” Margaery assured her. Coming to place a hand on her shoulder and smile kindly. Sansa had all but forgotten the demonic face she saw when waking Lady Tyrell; far too consumed by her own demons. 

“What shall you do?”

“Sleep.”

Sansa’s shoulders dropped and she scowled with self pity.

“Then when I wake, woe to Dorren.”

Sansa’s shoulders raised back up and she smiled for the first time since her crime. 

Though later on, as she sat, alone and more isolated than ever inside her chambers her mind was able to start to catch up with events. Not just the death of Ser Meryn but now she had sentenced another man to die. It would be easy to blame Trant for this, the other man; Dorren did not need to die if not for the actions of the disgraced Kingsguard. This could go on and on until a trail of bodies were piled up by her door. True she wished certain people to be gone from this world. Joffrey. Cersei. Tywin. However this didn’t mean every man sworn to the lions.

Gods, Sansa suppressed a wail before collapsing on her bed in a fit of sobs which racked her whole body.

* * *

Robb left the camp. He was leading the outriders and they had made very good distance. His men had a fire underneath them recently. It was like the Whispering Wood again. His massacre at Clegane’s Keep had spurred them on. The march East had changed the mood of his men. They went from fearing him to realising they had someone (something) on their side who was deadly and terrifying to the enemy. The idea of victory returned to the Northern and Riverland armies. Not that they had thought they would lose, just they had been bogged down in a slogging match for a while and now were reinvigorated. 

Robb sneaked past his own sentries. That perhaps ought to have worried him, that it was so easy to get out of his camp. Though it was more the worry of sneaking in he supposed.

Robb was alone soon. In the cool, pleasantness of the Riverland woods. The whole of the South he had seen he had liked; it was possible to walk without having to wrap up in twenty layers and the variety of landscape awed him. He appreciated it whenever he had a moment break from the war and tonight was one of those nights. He found a clearing in the woods and stripped his clothes off, dropping them into a neat little pile along with some water for the morning.

Robb then stood naked in the clearing alone; waiting. Waiting for what he expected to happen. Waiting and waiting. Nothing happened. Nothing came. 

Robb started to feel ridiculous. Standing as naked as the day he was born the breeze from darkening night made him feel chilly. “I’m an idiot,” he grumbled to himself.

Robb was about to turn and leave but as he went to turn his legs gave out under him. Falling down his knees struck stones and broken branches and thorns and nettles but he felt nothing. Well he felt nothing in his knees he did in his hands. Willing it on this time he watched his skin melt away, falling loose like pieces of a block of fat over a flame. Then the growing bones, cracking and snapping loudly as claws grew and angry black fur spurted over the bone.

Over  
Robb’s arms.

Over  
Robb’s shoulders.

Over  
Robb’s chest.

Robb became the monster again, he forced it out, determinedly willing his whole being to become the other him. Just as he was about to scream as loud as he could his teeth fell out; plucked from his gums, before he could recognise this feeling his jaw grew; shattering his mouth, above and below the lips the bone broke forth and tore the skin in half; ripping and tearing it. Until the skin hung loose either side of his jaw like fleshy flaps of a tent; blowing in the wind as blood gushed forward. They only hung there for a moment before they, like his fingers, melted away and dark fur grew there too. Sharp teeth like bodkin arrow heads barged their way through his gums, in a long line of death.

Robb tried to look down at his now hulking frame, which was now twice; even more, bigger than he was originally. He couldn’t look down, as his eyeballs came loose; wriggling free of his sockets and then falling pathetically to the floor like limp jelly. 

Robb was blind.

Robb was blind for a second, before yellow eyes grew back, in the place of his human eyes, these were sharper and clearer. The eyes of a deadly predator. The night sky was alive for the first time, stars he had never seen before appeared, but he had no time to appreciate such things. 

Robb stood. Looked at his hands, not hands claws. Looked at his arms, not arms weaponised limbs. Looked at his feet, not feet giant paws. Looked at his reflection in a pool of water, not Robb… No it was Robb.

Robb tilted his head back and howled at the moon. It felt right to do so.

Robb knew what he was now. Now he needed flesh.

* * *

Edmund was drunk, but not drunk enough, he wanted more and more and more. Laughing at nothing in particular he picked up his two pint glasses of ale and left the bar, walking outside of the tavern and plonking himself down.

“Here fucker,” Edmund slid the glass over. “Oi Dorren! Wakey, wakey!”

“Cheers mate.”

“I was thinkin’.”

“Don’t hurt yourself.”

“Fuck off.”

“Fuck you.”

“Anyway I was thinkin’,” Edmund continued, slurring a little, “it’s funny ain’t it. How when there’s a battle it’s all panic and you’re proper scared and that of getting all fucked up. Dying and shit. Now there ain’t no battles and we’re fuckin’ bored.”

“That’s fucking true, when Stannis attacked fuck me I thought we were buggered,” Dorren agreed. “I didn’t wanna fight there. We were going to be arse raped, standing on that wall and looking out at those boats I near shit myself.”

“Same. Until that little midget fella did alright by us.”

“Shhhh, shut the fuck up you fucking idiot,” Dorren hushed his friend. “It’s true,” he whispered, “but shut the fucking fuck up. Right but I was… Where was I… You fucked me all up you wanker… Oh right, yes, but now I stand outside that room making sure that little girl don’t run away, which she ain’t doing and then bow and scrape for her ‘cause she’s still a lady and that. How is that fuckin’ fair?”

“‘Cause you’re in the Red Keep? I’m patrolling the bloody ramparts like a cunt.”

“First you are a cunt and second standing still is worse.”

“Nah.”

“Yes.”

“At least you got the Stark girl to look at, she’s a beauty,” Edmund slurred. 

“Bit young for me.”

“Will be a beauty whatever, better be looking at pretty ladies than walking up and down and up and down and up…”

“Shut the fuck up,” Dorren punched his friend in the arm. “You won’t believe this right,” he gesticulated wildly with his tankard. “Meryn Trant.”

“The Kingsguard?”

“That’s the bloke, he turned up last night, all drunk and shouting and dismissed me and shoved himself into Stark’s chambers, all angry and fucking yelling,” Dorren rambled off. 

“What you do?”

“Go home. Have a wank then went to sleep.”

“Wanker!”

“Tonight we’re getting girls, anyway, anyway he ain’t been seen since,” Dorren revealed, he was very happy to share this secret information of the goings on of the highborns. 

“Fuck. Fuck,” Edmund mumbled as if this was the most interesting story ever in a manner only a drunk person could manage. “Well we don’t fare well against Starks do we?”

“Lucky for us we ain’t fighting them, they’ll have to pry me out of the Capitol… Cause…”

“What?”

“That girl is giving me eyes,” Dorren nodded with his head behind Edmund. “Don’t look, don’t look you dick. She’s fucking giving me the fucking eyes.”

“Well fuck you I’ll fucking look if I fucking want and yes she is, you can’t really see her face though,” Edmund told him, a little jealous there was only one girl. 

“I see tits, that’s a girl, that’s enough, a pussy is all I need. I’m gonna talk to her.”

Edmund was about to protest being left alone but Dorren was already standing up, holding onto the table to steady himself. He staggered a little but made a great effort to walk as sober as he could over to this cloaked lady.

“Hello darlin’.”

“Are you Dorren?” A surprisingly posh voice asked him.

“Yes. You heard of me?” Dorren’s ego inflated ten fold. 

“The one who guards Sansa Stark.”

“Yes,” he replied looking a bit confused before he realised something, something which could not have been true but he, even as drunk as he was, knew to be. “Fuckin’ hell,” he whispered in disbelief, “you’re Margaery Tyrell!”

“And you’re dead.”

Before he could even process her words her hand seized his face and smashed it into the wall behind her. To do this she had to lift him up by the face and swing him around in a half-circle in a very non-human move. One crack and the back of his skull exploded. Brains, fragment of bone and blood splattered over the tavern’s wall. Like a rotten pumpkin.

She turned to leave in one quick and deliberate movement.

“Demon! It’s one of the demons!”

* * *

“Demon! It’s one of the demons!”

Don’t run, don’t do anything else more. I turned to leave, being deliberate but brisk. Leaving the murder scene with long paces. As I went to pull my hood up further a hand snatched out at it. I didn't expected that. I had expected the brutality of the killing to stop anyone from interfering. I caught the hood but not before a smattering of those bloody religious fanatics, who were everywhere nowadays, saw my face.

“MARGAERY TYRELL!”

“THAT’S MARGAERY TYRELL!”

“DEMON!”

“DEVIL DEVIL!”

“TYRELL.”

“MARGAERY TYRELL.”

My heart would have froze if it were still beating. I had to make a snap decision. Either kill every single person here who could be a witness or flee. Maybe thirty people… No… I couldn’t...

I chose to flee. Making things worse I disappeared in superspeed, running maybe a hundred mile an hour I was scaling the outside walls of the Red Keep; the side which faced the Blackwater, and was back in my chambers less than ten seconds from when I started running.

“Shit,” I swore. “Shit. Shit. Shit.”

It was a slight possibility I had made things worse.


	9. Margaery's Gift

-9-

“You’re a beauty you know.”

I did, too an extent but always felt uncomfortable when it was pointed out over and over as it oft was. I shivered as Elizabeth ran the back of her hand down the side of my face. Her skin was cold, yet I still leaned into it. I couldn’t believe she was real. Elizabeth Esced had come from somewhere very foreign, into the Reach and my life within a week. My family was away in Oldtown leaving my grandmother and me to run Highgarden. I had been charmed by her. So charmed. If I was considered a beauty then she was far beyond the realms of words. She was tall, flaring at the waist into long, athletic legs. Raven black hair which reached her waist. Her face was flawless, ivory perfection with dark blue eyes; which were almost black. She took my breath away. 

I had twinges and feelings towards some of the more attractive men I’d bumped into my life but with Elizabeth that twinge made me weak at the knees. I’d worried I was like Loras and preferred the same sex but I didn’t. Just her.

Her face was alabaster, pale, white with eyes so powerful they bore holes inside me. I couldn’t think more about her as she leaned in, putting her exquisite face, so close to mine. I had to shut my eyes, unable to deal with the power this lady had over me.

My lips complied with hers as she lightly kissed me. She growled, like an animal and pushed me back and kissed me proper.

“My room?” I stammered as she broke away for a second, to rest her forehead against mine. The growl I received in response made my heart flutter. She picked me up from the secluded garden, which was reserved for the Tyrell family and very special guests only. It must have been my mind but it seemed like she had picked me up and one moment later we were in my chambers.

I’d never felt anything like this. I don’t think I ever will again. 

The spark which raced over my mouth as she finally captured my lips in a soft kiss, breaking apart to lay several kisses before taking my bottom lip between her’s, was incredible. I responded to what she was doing moving my mouth in motion with hers, reacting to everything she did. This was what a kiss should be; caring and delicate and reciprocal. I hadn’t even considered that something could be this intimate and… Perfect, but it was.

I moved my hand around from her back to hold onto her waist and the side of her stomach which she took as encouragement to intensify our kiss, her hair fell forward and tickled the sides of my ears and neck.

Time didn’t exist. I was in bliss.

She finally broke apart from me pulling my bottom lip back very lightly and playfully with her teeth before resting her forehead on mine again, as we had when we started. I wasn’t breathing heavy but it was elevated and my arms were still entwined with her body. She untangled herself from me and after one last peck on the lips she started pushing me backwards and seductively snaked down my body. 

“Lie back, you’ll enjoy it,” she mumbled.

Lying on my back on my bed which had been my bed since I was child, I moaned and slowly stretched out my spine and arms, convulsing into pleasure. Elizabeth’s head was gone, when I was able to briefly open eyes, I could see her perfect body from under my skirts;where her head was burrowed. Her tongue seemed to be moving as fast as a hummingbird and I spasmed and moaned and groaned; writhing in pleasure. 

I sighed contently and let every muscle in my body go limp as Elizabeth pushed my skirts back down and crawled up the bed to lie next to me. Taking my contented and slightly delirious head in the crook of her arm. Softly stroking my hair. 

“Wow.”

“I know.”

“Do you want me too…” I offered vaguely coming round, I was too shy to say; well I don’t even know what I would say. 

“No sweetie,” Elizabeth purred into my ear. “You just enjoy.”

“I want to do something for you.”

“You’re special. You don’t need to. You already have,” she murmured, changing her position, to lie on one elbow facing me. She kissed me lightly. “You are special. I sought you out. I want to give you something.”

“What?” I breathed, unable to truly focus on her words when her face was so close. 

“A special gift. One which one in ten million has and can only be given by those who have it.”

“What?”

“Do you want to live forever?”

“Sorry?” I asked confused. I had thought we were going to have sex again in some unimaginably incredible way. 

“Do you?”

“Who doesn’t?”

“True but only the most special deserve to. I think you do.”

What she was saying was insane. These were the words of a crazed person who was sent for observation at the Citadel in Oldtown. Yet I bought into every word. Staring into her eyes; I was captivated. A marionette under her control. 

“Do you want to be stronger, faster, smarter than everyone? Have control over their minds. Never get old. Never get fat. Never get sick. Never get hurt? Live forever?” Elizabeth asked but it didn’t sound like a series of question. It sounded like a foregone conclusion like I would say yes… I wouldn’t but I couldn’t not. Not to those eyes and that face.

“I do.”

“Close your eyes.”

I did. 

I felt her body reposition again over my body so her head was by my shoulder, her raven hair spilling over my face and chest. She leaned into my neck and I winced and hissed in pain as something pricked me. 

Before I could protest or even ask what was happening, I moaned again, just like when she was between my thighs. This was even better. I was connected to her as my body pulsed and quivered. It ended too soon. As Elizabeth rested her forehead, lightly, against mine.

“Open your eyes,” she demanded, I did, her mouth was covered in blood. Mine? Must be. I wasn’t scared. “Drink from me.”

Another insane thing to say which caught up and didn’t process properly in my brain. While I struggled with it Elizabeth straddled my waist, her thighs pressing me tight under her. Taking away any chance of me saying no to her. She took her fingernail and above the exposed part of her left breast she dragged it along, cutting herself very deep. I was not able to even take in this sight before her other hand was behind my head and forcing me up to suckle on this wound. 

Rapture. Pure Rapture. Then fogginess and blackness.

* * *

“SOMEONE SAW ME!” I burst into my grandmother’s chambers. She snoozing at her desk with a small measure of red wine drunk from her cup. It wasn’t very late in the evening but she was fast asleep. She looked her age when sleeping… I won’t ever get to experience that.

“What? Dear Margaery, what are you shouting about?” Olenna woke up to pretend she wasn’t asleep in the first place as older people tended to do so. 

“Someone saw me, saw me, recognised me, saw me, they saw me!” I burbled. Feeling more human and weak than ever before. 

“Saw you do what?”

“Kill someone. I went to kill this Lannister soldier who knew too much and someone saw my face!”

“No one will believe that and I’ll give you an alibi,” her grandmother waved off her concerns. “You think you are the first highborn to kill a commoner and have it covered up?” 

“No you don’t understand, I did something very not normal, I moved fast.”

“How fast? Gods,” the Queen of Thorns jumped in her seat as I moved several feet over in less than a blink of an eye to demonstrate. “Gods, I wasn’t aware you… Gods.”

“I was seen by those… Those… Those bloody fanatics! Those religious idiot psycho bastards!” I ranted in my panic. “I picked him up and then, they saw, and killed him, and saw me and knew my name.”

“What? You need to calm down, I can’t help if you don’t explain!”

“I killed him, I picked him up by his face and threw the back of his head so hard into a wall it splattered, then when I went to leave someone yanked at my hood. Revealed my face for a brief moment to a Red Cloak who recognised me. Then all the fanatics started calling me by my name and screaming and yelling devil!” I rambled off.

“My word, that is a tough one. Look. The Lannisters, especially Tywin aren’t going to start believing unbelievable things, what, whatever you are no one knows truly exists so they will put it down to peasant superstition.”

“What if they know about things like me, other things out there,” I added thinking of Arya and thinking of Sansa’s new found strength. “What if they just keep quiet about it. They don’t divulge their military or economic secrets to the world why would divulge arcane knowledge?”

I was looking for reassurance but what I got was anything but. It was a look of contemplation from my grandmother that things maybe a lot worse than she had thought.

* * *

The sun rose at Highgarden very early, by seven in the morning it was bright and cheery. Normally I rose with the sun, enjoying and basking in it as I greeted the new day. 

Today was different. Very different. The second the sunlight burst through my window onto my bed I threw myself away. 

How was it possible? I was several yards away from the bed, in one movement that should have taken longer. I shook, looking around the room, reorienting myself. I hadn’t breathed in for several moments of panic and I noticed and held my breath, held it and held it, my body didn’t scream at me to inhale. 

My hands were pale and my skin had lost the freckles and blemishes which were all too familiar now were gone. Touching one hand with the other I was cold. Like a corpse. 

“Morning.”

“Fuck!” I cried jumping in my skin from shock. “Elizabeth?!” Everything came flooding back from the night before when I saw her sitting on the edge of the desk in the corner of my chambers. “What’s happening to me?!”

“You’re like me now.”

“Like what?”

“Me, you’re special.”

“Stopping saying special, stop it, I can’t bear to hear it again.”

I rooted myself to the spot shaking a little as Elizabeth stood and glided over to, taking her hands in hers and squeezing them.

“Relax. This is the first day of your new life.”

“You. Blood. You, you blood, had blood, I drank, oh god,” I slipped free of her grip and fell to the floor and began to cry. My tears felt wrong; they were thicker and stickier than I had felt before, with my fingertip I touched my eye and recalled in horror when I saw droplets of blood smeared over the digit.

“It’s alright, don’t worry, you are beyond human now. You are unique and powerful and we…”

“We aren’t anything, you have mutated me! I didn’t want this!” I wept more coarse tears of blood.

“You did, you agreed.”

“After you raped me! After you used whatever this is,” I gesticulated wildly with my hands, “you bewitched me with your… Your evil. I didn’t want this!”

“You did and you do. Don’t worry it takes a while to get used to but now you have eternity.”

“LEAVE!”

“Pardon me?!”

“LEAVE AND NEVER COME BACK!” I cried out.

“Margaery,” Elizabeth whispered softly.

“GUARDS GUARDS GUARDS!”

“Fine, fine, I’ll go. I’ll find you after a time when you’ve reconsidered you’re mood. Then I’ll give you the help you need, the guidance. I know it’s confusing at first.”

“LEAVE LEAVE!” I wailed like a mad person. I closed my eyes and mopped the blood up with my night clothes only to open them and see I was alone in the room. Alone and scared and… Hungry so very hungry.

* * *

“Margaery Tyrell you have to come with us.”

“No she doesn’t,” Olenna snapped angrily. She had got rather angry to begin with when twelve Red Cloak soldiers had barged their way into the gardens where the Tyrell family took their breakfast. 

“This is a royal command my lady, both the King and Lord Tywin Lannister have requested Lady Tyrell’s presence,” the Red Cloak spoke looking away from them all.

“She’ll go at her convenience.”

“Come now mother,” her father spoke up naively, “I’m sure the King just wishes to see his future Queen.”

“Don’t be an idiot Mace, for one day, try,” Olenna replied. “She isn’t going with you so bugger off.”

“Mother!”

“I’m sorry but this isn’t a polite request, Lady Tyrell is coming with us,” the Red Cloak replied.

I stood up and waved off my family as I made my way to meet these men head on.

“Thank you if you’ll just follow…”

“No.”

“What?”

“No,” I repeated. “I’m not coming.”

“My lady there is no choice, we have been authorised to use force if necessary.”

“Fine by me.”

I stood off with them, being confrontational as possible. The man sighed and stepped forward to snatch at my wrist. I was gone. I was behind the whole troop. 

“The fuck?!” 

I put my arms through the back pairs chests, using them like spears, the arm the shaft, the hands the spear tips. No one had even reacted before I was dancing around to the middle of the troop and I launched another two men so high up in the air the drop and collision would kill them. 

Another four fell to vicious strikes; so hard their breastplates collapsed along with their ribs and their organs. 

Leaving a final four. Including the man giving orders.

“IT’S TRUE RUN!” One of the Lannister guards shouted and he and another made off without hesitation. 

The two left looked confused for a second only before the man who hadn’t spoken was lifted up by his throat. I lifted him so quickly that he was horizontal to the floor and threw him down so fast he hit directly. Shattering everything in him.

I grunted as the man who had ordered me to come with them in the first place stabbed his sword into my gut. I backhanded him; he flew back several feet. 

“Authorised to use force?” I asked him, as he scrambled to make it back to his feet. I could hear his heartbeat. It was like a smithy’s hammer striking the anvil. Singing at a tremendous pace. Walking towards him I pulled free his sword and snapped it in half like a breadstick. My stomach had already healed itself before the two pieces of the blade struck the floor. 

“No. No. No!”

“Funny when I said no, you wouldn’t take that for an answer!” I growled in a demonic voice that wasn’t mine. Bloodlust had taken over me completely and I didn’t think twice about smashing the heel of my shoe into his ribcage; rupturing his lungs and breaking his spine. 

Revelling in my brutality for a second reality came back to me and I turned sheepishly to see my family looking at me with a fear which cut me to the core. They weren’t looking at their granddaughter, their sister, nor child. They were looking at a monster.

I fled so fast the plants in the garden were torn out of the soil from the whiplash I created. 

I had to leave King’s Landing. I had to now. I had one stop first. 

“Margaery? Did you solv…”

“No, I made things worse, grab anything you can carry,” I told Sansa urgently. 

“What’s happening?”

“I’ll tell you later do you want to leave this place?”

“And go to Highgarden?”

“No they’ll be looking for me there, we’ll go find your brother, I’ll take you home!” I told her hurriedly. It must be a lot to process in a short space of time for Sansa but we needed to go now. 

“Robb?”

“Yes! Obviously. Do you have another brother?! Oh shit yes you do whatever yes Robb I’ll take you to his army.”

“Erm.”

“You need to…” I stopped talking as I heard down the hall the impending sound of metal clad feet, and a lot of them marching down our way. “They’re coming. Decide.”

“Yes.”

“Good,” I picked the bigger girl up in my arms like she was weightless. That scent was there again. The one I recognised on Arya Stark which made me uneasy but there was no time to explore it now. “Hold onto my neck really tight,” I told Sansa as she screamed in panic as I leapt from her balcony, high above the jagged rocks which killed Ser Meryn Trant. I swung back in and caught the rock with my spare hand. I pushed aside and jumped thirty of so yards sideways each time until we were until the wall at the back of the Red Keep, ripping and tearing my dress as I went. I climbed down the rocks and then we were by the shore. A few fisherman looked at us, startled, but I moved so fast we gone as soon as they saw us. 

“Wow,” Sansa stopped when I dropped her to her feet. She bent over and retched several times. 

“That’s the last time I help someone out.”

“I’m out,” Sansa just ignored me as she looked back at the looming shadow and outline of the Capitol. “I’m free!” She grabbed me around the waist and picked me up to hug me so tightly. 

Maybe it was worth it. Though looking down at my dirt and mud and blood covered body and ruined clothes which I had no way of changing, maybe it wasn’t. 

“I won’t have to see Joffrey ever again!”

So maybe that made it worth it.


End file.
